We were just inside the edge of the Red Warning zone, so yeah, got kind of toasty here. Yesterday was less bad but it was till unpleasantly humid last night, and rather warm ans till very humid this morning. Coming out of work today, the temperature was much more pleasant but it's still a bit on the humid side. But it did absolutely piss it down last night at around 9pm or so (albeit not for long). I don't think there's any more rain specifically forecast but it's been cloudy and rather still for a while now so maybe we'll get another dumping later...

Yeah, it seems like the clouds have gathered to make it as stuffy as anything!

Well it's raining here today.
And more 'pleasantly warm' than 'hot' in here.

Almost back to normal for a Scottish summer then, or at least it will be once the rain gets heavier and the temperature plummets a bit!  :)

Ahh, it was lovely walking ome from work yesterday - the sky was grey and some faint drizzle was falling :D. About an hour after I got home it thoroughly pissed it down, though, so I'm glad I at least wasn't out in that. But at least it makes a massive change from the horrible meltyness of the beginning of the week.

Seems like any coolness is short lived - it's already prettu hot out there today and only going to get hotter. Gt up early to go walk the canal for a few hours before it got, that was nice. But friends about to walk some local tracks now, and it's going to be baking!

Just checked the weather forecast on the website and it looks like it's not gonna get any higher than 25 today, nor on any of the next week. In fact on some days it won't even get that high, maybe lower 20s. So that's fine :D.

That would be good :)

Clouded over here today, looking like rain is certain.
Temperature is at that "just comfortably 'not-cold'" level.
Almost back to normal :)

Hey guys, just poking around and wondered if there was any chance of someone being able to run something at some point. I suppose if it was, you would've said. But all my games have died so currently I'm not actually playing (or running) anything. I still have several Fourth Edition characters I'd one day like to actually play, rather than just have them as a sheet in the Builder and a backstory/personality in my head. It's actually the first time in quite a long time that I've been completely without a game. Various others have just kind of died or not got started in the first place :(.

Oh, I thought you were playing a pathfinder game under Shadow? I haven't been following along with it super regularly, but I thought it was still going?

Nah, it's died. Most of the players had dropped out over time and there were just three of us left (though to be fair, I prefer a smaller group anyway and we started out pretty big). Then I had a PM from the GM a few weeks ago saying they'd been speaking to Carmen's player and she'd had to drop out so the game wasn't gonna continue any more. So now I have no games, sadface :(.

Ah, that's a shame. Work etc has still been a bit of a drain, so wouldn't have been starting anything this year I'm afraid.

Ah well, I figured you'd have said something already if you were up for a game, but thought I may as well ask anyway, just on the off chance :D.

I've played a few forum games over the years, but never been in one that's actually finished (as in, gone all the way to an ending without just stalling).
Feeling a little disillusioned with them due to that.

I'm still in one at the moment, but may be the last one, unless I find one that really sparks my imagination.
(As my imagination is currently distracted and heavily-occupied in world-building, and thinking of something to work on for this year's NaNo, that might be difficult for a while!)

Yeah, play by post is hard as it's quite a long and / or intense commitment for even a 'one shot' and it's very easy to let go. And gives far more time for circumstances or interest to change.

It's why I ended this game really, I think you need to be able to post consistently and reasonably quickly to keep the momentum going on a game, especially one where the drive is more discussions with people and smaller things, rather than just general actions pushing a plot along. If I had to push the updates to weekends only (which is what I felt I needed to do) it would have possibly tailed off. :(

I find the momentum can continue as long as everyone posts regularly. My tabletop game had ground to a halt when the first lockdown started, and during the hiatus one player dropped out due to having too much IRL stuff going on, leaving two players. The game continued to not happen for a while, though, until earlier this year when I suggested running it like a forum game but in Discord, using channels as the "threads". Both players said that would be cool and I got it all set up and everything, and we started but other than one evening where we were clearly both all online at once and posted a whole bunch in one go, mostly they seemed to post only once every few days or so. I was replying any time I saw a post, so often within minutes, but once a day would've been fine. Their posts ended up coming maybe once a week, and eventually we went, like a month between posts. By this point I had been running a one-shot for a couple of new players and they had really enjoyed it and wanted to do more, so I basically decided to just end the other game because it clearly wasn't going anywhere (I had seen both players online, on Discord and/or Steam, plenty of times and yet they weren't bothering to post in the game) so I gave a few days' notice and then removed everyone and reset all the channels.
Then I invited the two other guys into the now-cleared server, but it seems IRL stuff has suddenly come up for both of them (one definitely confirmed that was the case, the other I'm not so sure but they haven't been posting much). So it feels like this has died before it even went anywhere, but I can't be arsed to clear things out again as then it'll just be me by myself in my server. Maybe they'll both be available again at some point and we can do something...but for now I have no games at all as that Pathfinder one on here died too. At least they stopped posting/being able to post after the one-shot finished, I suppose :P.

Yeah, i guess consistent posting is a better way to put it, but the speed of posting definitely affects the sort of story / game you can run too.

I suppose. As long as everyone posts around once a day or so, at least the momentum can be maintained. In other news, since the other day when I made that "I have no group" post, I did get a reply from the GM of a game that's gonna be running on Discord - they had posted in a server saying they were gonna be running a text-based game where we don't all have to be on at once, which is exactly the kind of game I prefer to be in, and they had a list of questions for prospective players to answer concerning the basics on what kind of game we would want to play, what kind of character, etc. I PMd them with my answers but didn't hear anything for about a week, at which point they replied to me to say they were inviting me to the game :D. We haven't actually started yet as not everyone has got their characters sorted, but I've aleady done mine - I'm using one of the collection I have whose games died before they could get anywhere. Hopefully this game will do a bit better...

The world I'm building is for a campaign I plan to run on a Discord Server as a one-player shot for a friend of mine.
(The same one who created that pic of Meri I posted up some time back).
She's finally in a less chaotic place in life where she actually has time to post stuff now, so should be starting soon if nothing goes wrong.

Going to be my first attempt at DMing (and on 5th Edition, which I've taken a bit of a crash course in learning over the past couple of years!)  So hopefully won't screw up too badly!
Also hoping I can keep it going too...

Oh, for some reason I thought you had run Fourth Edition already :D. I have no interest in touching Fifth - too much of it annoys/frustrates me, based on what I've seen. I'll stick with my nice friendly Fourth Edition where everyone gets to do cool stuff, the monsters are interesting, and combat requires actual tactics and manoeuvring and stuff :D.

That's cool you have a new game lined up Nym!

And good luck with the game Meri, glad you finally feel prepared with 5th ed :)

Nowhere near actually.
Just going to be winging it mostly, hehe.

Luckily the play-by-post format gives me time to pause and think.  No way I'd be able to improvise on the spot with this mess!

5th Edition is actually pretty easy to figure out.  Except for the combat levels.  Just have to hope I don't cause an instant TPK on the first fight...
This message was last edited by the player at 19:41, Sun 23 Oct 2022.

Yeah, play by post is great for rules looking up / breathing room!


If it makes you feel any better, I always deliberately aimed my power level higher than normal just because you can then play the creatures less perfectly / in character, and also account for player actions without it seeming like too easy a fight.

And also as players we tend to get scared when things start going even slightly wrong / badly, so a fight feels tense even if we're actually not in any full danger.


Basically, don't worry too much about combat as long as you think you've got in in the ballpark :)

Well, some of these characters are less "in the ballpark" and more "bounced into the ballpark in the neighbouring town, after partially demolishing the building next to the ballpark!"
Have to just play it as it happens I suppose.

5th Edition characters seem pretty fragile at Level 1.  (My Player's character starts off with 10 HP).  Might have to fudge a couple of rolls at first if my luck starts being weird and giving my monsters critical hits just when I don't want them!

Starting area is in a forest though, so maybe I can have a tree fall on them to even things up a little :)

Yeah, starting characters in Fifth Edition are pretty squishy, from what I hear, and most of them don't even have the main basic thing that makes them their class (like, Druids can't even shapeshift yet, Paladins don't have any Paladin powers, wtf), so it seems like pretty much everyone is going "I hit it" or "I cast this crappy basic spell at it"...which for some of them never seems to change even once they level up a bunch :P.