Ah, thanks.
BTW, how do yāall want me to handle player reminders? How long should I wait before sending private messages etc.?
I donāt wanna nag folks, but we also want to avoid unnecessary delays due to someone not realising that the GM is waiting for them to do/say something.
Is the list of @mentions Iāve been doing at the top of the GM posts useful?
(also, an experiment: I forgot to do that with the last GM post, so I just edited the @names in. Do you still get the notification if the @'s are added as a later edit?)
Iād say if a playerās posted recently before the GM post youāre waiting for a response to, then check in with a PM after 2hrs or so.
But if they havenāt posted for a bit beforehand, wait longer- we could be at work, or sleeping etc.
(The @'s you edited in still sent out a notice. Iāve got the threads on my watchlist, so I get notifications whenever thereās a new post anyway, but the @'s might be more useful to people watching more threads than I am.)
PMs are good for that. Assuming the player is aroundā¦
I think this has been the problem when weāve tried these here before; itās why they were structured to let the game continue when players go AWOL.
I have tracking turned on for that topic, so you shouldnāt be waiting too long for me.
There being five players plus a GM, I like to wait for at least 2-3 posts in-between my own.
That said, a notification canāt hurt.
Feel free to nag me. Iāve turned on email notifications on my phone because I missed some things without it. And yes, the @mentions have been helpful. Iāve switched to Watching, so maybe that will help.
If I am too slow to respond, please take over my character temporarily and keep things moving. I donāt want to hold up the game.
GM note, a bit of combat detail for the GURPS-inexperienced.
A typical sword swing is likely to do around five points of damage as a base. Any DR on the target (Damage Resistance from armour etc) is subtracted from this base damage.
However, that damage can be enhanced by hit location and damage type. For example, a cutting attack does 1.5x damage after penetrating armour in most places, and 2x damage to the neck. Impaling, OTOH, does 2x damage to the torso and 3x damage to the vitals, but only 1x damage on the limbs (and impaling attacks tend to have lower base damage to start with).
Youāve all got about 8-15 hit points. Going to zero hit points is not instant death, however.
The way it works is that once you get to zero HP you need to make a HT roll every second to avoid falling unconscious (before that, at 1/3 HP you start taking major skill and movement penalties; youāre staggering and beaten up by that point).
When your HP reaches the negative of their original value (i.e., -11 if your initial HP total was 11) you have to pass another HT check to avoid death (just one check, not one per second this time)ā¦
Each multiple of your HP total below zero requires another death check with increasing penalties. At -5xHP, youāre automatically dead.
So, as with reality, the typical finish of a GURPS fight is that the loser takes a big hit, staggers around for a few seconds before passing out, and then slowly bleeds to death over the next few minutes.
Overall message: a fighter can be knocked out with just one or two hits, but may get in a few revenge swings before they drop, and is likely to survive the fight so long as the healers get to them before they bleed out.
Is there space? Are there limits? Can I be a sassy robot butler?
See upthread; extra PCs welcome, but it is a relatively realistic low-tech medieval fantasy world. No robots, and excessive sassyness is likely to get you killed fairly quickly.
If you still want in, give me an outline for a character that fits within the world (again, see upthread for details), and Iāll write something up for you.
Uhhhā¦ I think I got the gist of things from the 116 posts somehow. Let me know if this flies;
After a dull, joyless marriage and an angering job as the serving wench in her husbands stereotypical inn filled with ignorant idiots in a small village along the road, Karoll the human (Reread the worldās rules on elves and this idea wouldnāt fit) decided to see what would happen if she mixed the stirge poison in with the drinks.
Stepping over the bodies in their agonized death throes, she discovered three things about herself:
- She was very good at mixing poisons and having them ingested unnoticed.
- She had a magnificently pleasant poker face in front of the people she was about to murder. She just seemed like a pleasant, yet unremarkable, hausfrau to them.
- Stepping over twitching bodies didnāt really bother her like she assumed it would have. In fact she felt nothing but a sense floating above it all. As if she were watching a world populated by ants.
After gathering the money, and stealing a mule she made her way across the land as a chef, dispensing death as she felt was needed, picking up a few backup skills. The ability to cook a delicious meal made her welcome in most every camp and town she entered. And the ability to strangle the hangers-on with a thin wire helped too.
Her knowledge of poisons is quite good at this point. You would think that this would make her a natural at the job of assassination, but why would she do that? Killing for money is barbaric. Death is for the deserved.
I can probably work with thatā¦
This is the most relevant of the posts upthread on the background: Possible PBBB laptop RPG game
Which country/culture is she from?
Youāve got the choice of tolerant cosmopolitan (Cardiel, all races and religions present), high-magic Catholic empire (Megalos), low-magic pseudo-English kingdom (Caithness), corrupt swashbuckling/pirate region (Araterre), relaxed high-magic Arabian Nights Sunni Caliphate (al-Wazif), uptight anti-magic Shia Sultanate (al-Haz) or barbarian tribal country (the Nomad Lands; think Game of Thrones, north of the Wall).
Conventional poisons on Yrth are no more effective than they are on Earth (i.e. mostly slow killers rather than instant knockout), but the presence of magic can enhance things substantially. Do you see her as a purely conventional killer, or does she have some magical ability as well?
Actually, looking at the narrative thread it doesnāt see like sheād be a good fit in the party as I presented her. If youāre willing to give me some time Iāll read both threads a bit closer and see if I can come up something a bit closer.
Sure, all cool.
Our illusionist seems to have gone AWOL; the party might be in need of a replacement mage.
(at present, weāve got a Dwarf heavy fighter, a Wazifi rogue, an Aralaise cloak & rapier swordsman, a barbarian shaman/healer and the aforementioned AWOL half-elf illusionist)
Would you allow the āunderground engineerā template? I donāt like playing mages. Too much paperwork.
I should be able to work with thatā¦
Iāll send you a PM to work out the details so we donāt publicise too many secrets.
Ranarās DX check to lunge into (instead of under) the carriage: @discbot roll 3d6
(or should this go in the narrative thread?)
