General OoC discussion

Barred door to the temple is only a delay as any intending on coming on in will. Barred door notwithstanding.

It will not take any time or effort to determine that something is wrong as the party has not taken enough effort to cover its tracks. It is only a question of time and probably not much of it either. Who knows if the gig is already up even by the time Morton arrives at the barred door.

Retreating to the first floor was the suggestion, but it was clear to me (as Aanbo would interpret) that Morton felt it was not enough and too close a proximity to whatever evil is keeping undead in a holy temple. That's why Aanbo reiterated the intention of whether or not Morton wanted to leave Orlane entirely and travel to Hochoch, to which Morton basically answered yes.

He has been wanting to leave Orlane since he got here. Hahaha

Morton was the only one who put any initiative to take care of Arya's body.

What the party doesn't seem to understand the "Between a rock & a hard place". The only way out is the temple barred door. The longer that the party stays inside, the more power will build up at that barred temple door. If the party takes a short rest then there is about 100% chance those outside the temple will be on full alert. And they will know from witness exactly what the composition of the party was at entering.

Party currently does NOT have the punch power to proceed much further without a total party wipe or losing more members. Going forward will only insure that the party lacks power to deal with the temple doors if power has built up there.

So, 1HP Morton does what is best for Arya's body and the view point that DB would have for a fallen priest. That is to get her corpse out of this temple before it can't be done easily. It doesn't take a genesis to tell that the party isn't going to stop.

I understand Morton’s concerns, but the priestess is probably the source (or a source) of the undead in the Dim Forest. Leaving her here to continue her activities pretty much ensures that there will be more reanimated bodies roaming around. Also, Morton tried leaving on his own already, both he and Arya were relatively healthy when they tried, and they were knocked out. What makes Morton think he will have greater success on 1hp and hauling a dead body all the way?

Regarding the time pressure with the village Morton is right: the longer we stay here, the greater the chance villagers will realize that something is wrong and come investigate. But I’d like to recall that (1) we took out the temple guards quietly, without raising the alarm; (2) we did so at dawn, and perhaps an hour has gone by, not much more (though it has been three months in real-world time); (3) even if they are initially alarmed , they will probably be confused before mounting a coordinated siege.

If it is clear that he will not be dissuaded from leaving the temple complex on his own, things might turn ugly IC.

I’m not in favour of intra-party conflict breaking out into actual fighting in the narrative, but Morton’s insistence on leaving immediately, all precautions be damned will be understood as psychological shock, as I mentioned, and would elicit an unpleasant response from Myrtha.

If the DM prefers that such scenes and conflicts be avoided, I will defer to his preferences at the table. In that case, Myrtha would escort Morton out and block the doors on the way back in, as the lesser evil.

That would go quite counter her personality, however (it’s a huge waste of time, and if we had time — which we don’t — we should be healing up, rather than splitting up). From her perspective, a shell-shocked green recruit is jeopardizing the entire mission because he can’t get his shit together. Worst still he is setting the well-being of a corpse over that of an actual DB who might still be alive and rescuable. It’s either cowardice or insanity, and in both cases it’s a threat to the DungeonBusters and their mission. Morton has been fleeting and unreliable, trying to get away from Orlane nearly as soon as he got here. In her assessment, he’s looking more and more like a liability, rather than an asset.

To make this abundantly clear, I have no problem with how you, @WanderOne, are playing or have played Morton. This is all IC. I see this as just more material to roleplay with and I enjoy gaming with you here (and elsewhere in GP). Just want to be clear about that if anything goes south IC in the next few posts.

Yes, I would like to make it very clear that this party conflict is purely from an in-character perspective. It is NOT a reflection of player style nor is it about the player themselves. I wouldn't expect the Dungeon Busters to be in agreement 100% of the time, and I think normally everyone would try to resolve the situation to reach a compromise, but in-game events and the perceived time crunch are definitely factoring into our decisions and actions.

I'd like to thank and congratulate everyone for roleplaying extremely well, and letting their character's personality traits shine.

Just an update on this: I am a little wiped out, but not from "con crud:" it's mostly that my daughter ran a series of games, one each on Friday, Saturday, and Monday, and there were a lot of logistics to handle to support her. But I got to play in four games myself: I ran my science fiction game on Friday, played in Cairn 2e on Saturday, played in Monty Python's Co-curricular Medieval Re-enactment Programme on Sunday, and played Shadowdark on Monday (yesterday). Once again, DunDraCon demonstrated that the weighted drawing method of registration is superior to the other methods I've seen. All the games were good (*), though they (as always) were also instructive on what to do and what not to do when running a game at a convention. I'm busy trying to think which one I should run first (**).

I had a lot of fun; thank you all for your well-wishes!

* - It should be said that I've very rarely had an outright poor game at a convention; good games are default, in my experience, with the occasional absolutely stellar game that gets talked about for decades. The ones that weren't good were very, VERY bad, but thankfully they have been vanishingly rare (and are also talked about for decades, honestly).

** - I am convinced that comedy games like the Monty Python Co-curricular Medieval Re-enactment Programme do not/would not fare well in play-by-post, unfortunately. They're extremely fun, but too much of comedy performance depends on timing. If I run that at some point in the future, it will be in real-time.

Glad you had a good time and got plenty of play time in. I love Monty Python. Glad you are back though because you run a stellar game. Loving the Dungeon Busters.

Spaceseeker is a high roller damn. Chase can't catch a break. haha

As I recall, this encounter, along with the ghoul fight that you've already done, is one of the toughest in the whole adventure. If your PCs survive this, I think everyone other than Aanbo will be ready to advance a level.

The DM’s minions are on fire!

Gotta say, I’ve never seen a DM roll so consistently well on his attack rolls, in my many years on GP. In between the skeletons and these goblins, it’s been really impressive.

I suppose if there's any argument in favor of joining Her cult, it's the bonus to attack rolls.

Agreed, use all your skills friend you are our only hope. No pressure. hahaha

LOL... Here's a table with all the combat rolls since entering the Temple of Merikka, so we can see the DM's average and ours (whenever SpaceSeeker has rolled for us, I've added it to our column). I've included initiative, death saves, attacks and saving throws, but not skill checks.

The first two column refers to the combat with the monks and the acolyte, the third and fourth relate to the skeletons, and the fifth and sixth relate to the goblins.

The DM has a higher average only in the skeleton fight. However, Spaceseeker has rolled 55% of all rolls, of which 25% were equal or lower than 10, 30% were higher than 10. PCs rolled 45% of all rolls, of which 21% were 10 or lower, and 24% were 11 or higher.

But the deviation from the norm (each number should on average show up 5% of the time) is where SpaceSeeker's rolls shine: the ten Lowest possible results are far less frequent in his rolls (the total deviation from the norm for 1-10 is -5%, whereas fr the PCs it was -3,6%), whereas for the ten highest possible results (11-20) his deviation is positive at +5%, whereas the party's was just +3,6%.

Basically, our rolls tended more to the statistical norm, and SpaceSeekers didn't. But above all his didn't in a skewed fashion, with high rolls over-represented, and low rolls under-represented.

I should probably do the table but only with attack rolls, because a 19 initiative is not as important as a 19 attack roll.

Yep, I think my highest rolls have been initiative .

Ember wakes up with 1 hp! She could sneak attack and spread fear among these awful goblins. Or she could discreetly run away...

I dunno; could it be that maybe Aanbo was right in pushing on into the dungeon past when anyone reasonable would have rested? These goblins can't seem to hit HIM at all.

It will be glorious if the party survives this after all.

But I can't help wondering: if it happens, will Aanbo relent and let people recover, or will he keep going on his own?

I can't wait to find out.

Remember Aanbo- dodge, duck, dip, dive, and duck.