Feedback Thread

[Steerpike]

About the game:

1. Things you like so far.

2. Things you don't like so far.

3. Things you wish would crawl in a hole and die.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

1. Everything done so far, I like. Getting hit in battle was scary, but I felt like the battle was fair and it was fun. I love the map, and the interactions with NPCs and your descriptions make the game rewarding to play.


2. The only thing I would do differently—and honestly, it's a little thing I wasn't planning to mention because it's not problematic—but since you asked: rather than roll for HP increases, we just get a consistent amount.

Example: the average roll of the HP die for your class (rounded to a whole #) plus your CON modifier

I LOVE that you removed the random attribute rolls and gave us the best starting HP we can get. For some reason, being at the mercy of a die roll in battle works for me, but I prefer permanent character attributes to not be randomized.


3. Nothing. It was hard enough to find a criticism just to answer #2.

I can see you put a lot of thought into this (story and gameplay), and you certainly know how to run a great game. Keep it up!

 

[Ankari]

1. Everything is great, so far. I love playing with the POV of each character. I write what my character thinks, put it in plain sight, and the other characters can't react to it! Ha! It's the ultimate tease. I like how the player characters are rolling with the additions we make to the scene. An example is the "dilated eyes" of Baldhart. I mentioned it, and LS just incorporated it. Great stuff.

2. I wish this were a real game and not a play-by-post. I think we are all great at role playing.

3. Bad rolls on rolz.org.

 

[Sparkie]

1) I like the overall campaign. So much so that last night I had a damn near irrational urge to write Dragon's Egg fanfic. I don't even like fanfic! What's wrong with me?

There's too many things I've enjoyed about Dragon's Egg to talk about in one post, so I'll stick to one thing: The writing.

While I agree somewhat with Ankari, I'm still glad this is a play-by-post. Reading these threads has been a terrific time for me. It's been like reading (and writing) a giant collection of related short stories. From Baldhart's valkyrie to Cadell's backstory to Ankari's worldview, it's been entertaining to read. Isn't that what counts? I hope my posts about Rydh are even half as enjoyable as the others have been. Regardless, I think we've all had a good start at building something very memorable here on MS.

2) This may seem weird, but I wish there was more that I could do for the game. Steerpike has put a lot into getting this together for us, and I sometime's feel like I'm not contributing enough. Same for Legendary Sidekick. I've gotta find a way to help out some, and I don't have a lot of ideas yet. I'm sure it'll come to me soon enough.

3) My own anxiety over the less-than-linear nature of how the game works. I'm used to rules. I'm used to restrictions. Freedom is fun, but a little frightening too. I really hope that Steerpike gives us some clues about how to proceed from time to time, because I'm not sure if I'm smart enough to figure some of this 'adventuring' stuff out. Having a few of my fellow PC's wake me up to what may be going right over my head would be fine too.

 

[Steerpike]

Thanks for the feedback so far.

1. Legendary Sidekick - that may not be a bad idea on hit points. I'll think about that. I usually do max at level one and roll thereafter, but it always sucks to roll a 1!

2. Ankari - Yeah, would be cool if we were all sitting around a table. Hopefully the electronic die rolling gods will smile on you.

3. Sparkie - You're doing great in your contributions, in my opinion. I'll try to do some more steering, when necessary. My natural inclination as a GM is not to railroad, and I've had table top sessions where everything I've planned gets shelved because the PCs decide to go check out that really interesting thing over there that I only mentioned in passing. There are many options for the PCs at this point: A) looking into the curse and what happened with the temple of Gefjon (which seems to interest most people); B) getting a fishing boat and trying to track down the Sahuagin for revenge; C) following up with Eskel's family; D) following up on items from the personal backstory of various characters; D) exploring Srilkind to see what else interesting is going on; E) striking out blindly into the northland for pure adventure.

Of those, A) heads into the overall story arc I have planned and B) would be a dangerous proposition. Any of them will work, however, as will anything else you guys can think of.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

If you want, I made a calculator (on Numbers for Mac, but it converts to Excel) to support that, so you can see what it looks like.

I made one in case I ever run a game, but I hope Dragon's Egg will last long enough that I never get the chance. It's way more fun to play your game than to run mine! If you want to use my HP suggestion, there are a few ways to go about it.


OPTION #1: Round up avg. of HP die roll + CON mod. This would mean a barbarian with +3 CON gets 10 HP per level, but a wizard with -3 CON is at 1 HP for his entire life.

OPTION #2: Use actual averages. The barb with +3 CON gets 9.5 HP per level, the wiz with -3 CON gets .25 HP per level. (He'd need to roll a 4 to gain 1 HP.)

OPTION #3: Same as #1, but have a minimum gain of .5 HP so the wizards and illusionists with -3 CON gain 1 HP every other level. (It may be no better than being at 1 HP for your entire life, but it's twice as good as what you can expect from actual rolling.)


By the way, the calculator I made also calculated the "to hit" at each class/level.

I have your email, so I'll tweak what I've got to match option #3 (it's at #1 now, but that sucks for the wimpy wizard).

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

If you do go with the no-roll option for max heath @ level-ups, what I proposed is similar to the expression for HP regeneration:

1 + CON MOD + LEVEL per day

The HP max increase could be expressed as: 1 + CON MOD + (HIT DIE/2)

(Same as "the average roll of the HP die for your class [rounded to a whole #] plus your CON modifier")

 

[Steerpike]

We could allow an option on hit points, I suppose. Take the sure thing "average" or take your chances with a die roll

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

You're evil!

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

You're evil!

I take that back. The way the current battle is going, you've given me a very easy choice. I won't depend on die rolls for permanent health if you give me the option not to—especially after seeing so many 1s and below average rolls!

Oh, and for fun, I tested my luck with 9 unofficial rolls (in room MStest1).

Not the real Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 7
Not the real Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 7
Not the real Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 4
Not the real Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 4
Not the real Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 5
Not the real Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 14
Not the real Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 14
Not the real Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 8
Not the real Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 9

Under my "average rounded up" option, Baldy gets 10 HP per level. I didn't beat 10 until Lv.7, so at Lv.6, I gained 27 HP—just over half of the 50 HP I would've had. At Lv.10, I gained 72 HP when I could've had a gain of 90.

This is why I'll never go to Vegas.



EDIT - Tried a second time, and gained 87 HP. That's slightly above a true average (9 x 9.5 = 85.5), but slightly below the 90 I'd get without rolling.

Spoiler: my second attempt

Another fake Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 10
(Lv.2 - I'm just as tough as real Baldhart!)

Another fake Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 11
(Lv.3 - I'm 1 HP tougher than real Baldhart!)

Another fake Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 6
(Lv.4 - I'm wimpier than real Bladhart by 3 HP.)

Another fake Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 6
(Lv.5 - I'm 7 HP wimpier.)

Another fake Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 13
(Lv.6 - I'm 4 HP wimpier.)

Another fake Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 11
(Lv.7 - I'm 3 HP wimpier.)

Another fake Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 4
(Lv.8 - Minimum roll - BOO! Now I'm 9 HP wimpier.)

Another fake Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 15
(Lv.9 - Maximum roll - YAY! But I'm still 4 HP wimpier.)

Another fake Baldhart: 1D12+3 => 11
(Lv.10 - Well, I have 102 HP now. The real Lv.10 Baldhart has 105 HP.
The average die rolling barbarian has 100, so I still came out ahead a little.)

 

[Steerpike]

Interesting.

The die roller seems to be rolling very low for all of us. Don't know if it is just a fluke or something with the roller. If it keeps it up, I'll find another that gives a better distribution. My poor monsters are starting to get discouraged

 

[Sparkie]

Interesting.

The die roller seems to be rolling very low for all of us. Don't know if it is just a fluke or something with the roller. If it keeps it up, I'll find another that gives a better distribution. My poor monsters are starting to get discouraged

I'll act the contrarian here, because outside of my most recent spell rolls I have no real complaints. I know it may seem like the roller is flawed, but a d20 can do funny things sometimes.

I bought a set of "D&D" dice at a local hobby store a couple of weeks back. I know we can't really use them, but I wish I could. At any rate, I'll compare LS's rolls with some manual ones and see what happens.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

If you look at my second attempt at nine HP rolls, I rolled just above true average. I think the die roller is fine. Don't forget that for all the crappy rolls we're getting, I had three awesome feat-of-strength rolls in a row and I rolled max damage.

 

[Steerpike]

3560 views in the main thread, as I write this. Must be other people looking at this besides just those of us playing

 

[Philip Overby]

Typically, I think people view the threads to see if they want to join. So we may get more players yet!

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Well, if people are reading our game, who can blame them? There's some good reading in there. Check out my sig! It's a damn good line, and it links to the game.

 

[Philip Overby]

I hate to be that guy that uses a character from a RPG game for actual stories (who am I kidding, I'd love to be that guy!) but I really like Nodrick. I'd like to perhaps try writing something about him in the future. And I love a lot of the characters in the RPG. It would be great to see stories from them in the Challenges section. OHHHHHHHHHHHH....idea! How about a Dragon's Egg Challenge that could use our characters for individual stories? Just throwing that out there.

 

[Steerpike]

I like the challenge idea, Phil. I'll post one over the next few days

To include all members, I thought I'd allow players to write about their own characters, or anyone else who wants to take part to read through the game posts and write something that is in some way related to the game.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

I'm working on stuff for Baldhart. With Phil as my witness, she existed before I played her in an RPG and so did Nissa. They just didn't have names.

 

[Ireth]

Heh. Cadell originated in a novel of mine, but didn't have much character development until I made him a minor villain in an RP, and then went on to make him much more sympathetic. Now he's fighting (or about to fight) right alongside his one-time enemies to defeat a common evil that threatens everyone, Fae and humans alike.