The Levitator's Tuesday night victims.

Tell us how you are using our gaming tools and how your sessions are going.

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Double King
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Post by Double King »

Thanks Az. Hope you guys have fun this week. Super sad that i'm not going to be on board for what lurks next. Turn over a rock or two in my memory. I look forward to hearing Arkwood's report.

Re Skype. Not sure why i'm such a Skype apologist except to say that it's so easy... aren't our Skype issues local to the same users? I don't think you or the Lev or I (...don't know that Josh has either) have had any problems with either hosting or getting booted.

I love that we haven't had any real MT issues since that first session. Way to go Trevor and co.

Double King
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Post by Double King »

Session 5: Some things are best left undisturbed.

As scavengers, we've grown feral. Pip thinks nothing of carving the key out of the ogre's paw. It's dark and the walls echo all of our actions making the precious few of us seem more. The dank pool of water was never inviting but it seems something is stirring within it. Quickly the party recoils to the far side of the pool. Whatever was within the water has becalmed.

Before we can gather our bearings, we hear the fumblings of a large party from whence we'd come. Arkwood points out that it's orcs. A flick of the wrist sends our sun-rod dark. Again the puddle burbles and gathers itself. Something slithers and slythes from it towards the orcs. Surprise rings from them and then the clash of battle. The sound is pushed back out towards the opening of the cave. Then silence. We wait. And wait. And then the victorious orcs can be heard progressing again.

It's decided that we will meet the orcs on our terms rather than wander into them again at a time not of our choosing. Our number advances again on the path next to the pool. Cloaked in Roguish luck, Pip blends into stone and advances quietly. A few steps too many brings him quickly into contact with a large party of orcs and orogs: a five deep wall of ugly.

Image

With surprise on his side, Pip launches a bolt into one of the forward orcs... quickly dropping him. Kruug wrestles back his sleeves and his arms dance to and fro. The dance of sleep grips a fair number of them and immediately three of the orcs falter. Arkwood's bow drops another. One of the orogs advances and hammers away on Javirgen with his fell falchion. We whittle them down until only the orog shaman is left. Pip steps into him with his blade out. Contemptuous of elves, the orog makes a snide comment in his piggish tongue. Pip smiles and says through clenched teeth, "i'm going to carve you a new spell-hole". And with that, his gingerly blade rips a hole from belly to fang. It's eyes fall white and all the magic in the world wouldn't staple its innerds back into place.

...

notes, technical and otherwise:

zero problems with b18 this time 'round. Lev is contemplating bumping us up to b24.

an unfortunate storm in the mid-west took the dm offline at about midnight. luckily our Skype connection was being run by one of our players and the party managed to hang out and chat for about thirty minutes.

Lev has been actively seeking feedback on the campaign and all of us are going over notes about how to deal with various elements of our game.

Double King
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Post by Double King »

Session Six: Plans done, undone and then run-orc-run

A small Dwarf approaches us. small and dwarf... i know. We feed our fallen companion one of the vials taken from the fallen orog shaman. As Javirgen begins to return to consciousness a ugly smell blows in from the cave mouth.

Standing around this pile of orc, Kruug offers to help our friend Javirgen back to his feet. Arkwood sniffs the air and is alarmed by the onrush of smoke and more sounds coming from the cave mouth where we initially entered. It had seemed prudent at the time to wedge open the hidden door in order to ensure our speedy passage. That same haste seems to have brought our foes and our mounts are no where to be found.

Slowly we regroup at the mouth of the cave. There is a haze of smoke that bars anything other than a faint light. Pip's keen ears hear a few orcs milling around outside but nothing more is known. Similar to the stunt he pulled near Sundabar, Kruug offers to disguise himself as one of the orc Shaman and lure the guards within. Kruug casts his disguise spell to assume the guise of the shaman. He starts luring orc and orog in from an outside camp a few at a time. This works a few times and then all the orogs and orcs come pouring out of their tents and charge the waiting enemy. Crying wolf with the orcs brings the heavy hand of the reserves.

Four heavily armed warriors with double-headed axes and two more Shaman. They come storming through, wary of the cave but unaware of us hidden amongst the walls and lichen. Kruug follows up the rear, pointing towards the stairs and quickly waving his arcane arms to summon a dire rainbow. A multi-tiered light rips through the cavern blinding a number of them and confusing the rest. This was our signal. And like carrion, we descend on the orogs.

Image
Orogs caught in Kruug's spell as battle begins

Denton loosens an arrow quickly, followed by the whistle of Pip's crosswbow. One of the Shaman winces an evil smile and cuts loose an electric ball of light from his fist and sends it skittering along the wall and around Pip. Arkwood engages the forward guard and shivers him with his falchion. Next, the Shaman turns to sting Kruug with his ugly light. The victorious Shaman stares down Kruug, leaning in to scream "Traitor" to the disguised Kruug, but the words get caught on Pip's bolt. His language curdles into a scream and then he drops.

Kruug again tries the ploy on the remaining orcs, but hearing that the leaders were so quickly minced, convinced the dozen remaining footmen to run for their horses and flee in terror.

Quickly realizing that they have all our stuff and our horses, the Party issues out of the cave mouth and attempts to route the orcs before they can gather goods and make a mess of the camp.

Image
Orcs flee from their long-distance doom

Pip makes a series of unbelievable and extremely long-distance shots, dropping a handful of orcs. Denton follows through with another remarkable shot and drops another. This dwarf we've managed to acquire also takes a shot at the fleeing orcs. The rest are managed by Javirgen, Arkwood and Kruug through a brief and confused melee. Arkwood takes the final blow at a fleeing orc. His falchion rips into the orc. The only thing holding him together is his spine.

As things are resolved and our tools, supplies and treasure are relocated, Kruug spots a fair elven woman, bound and tied in a small cage made out of humanoid bones. She is sleeping.

Pip asks Kruug what price we can expect to fetch at market for a slightly used, caged elf?

...

Other notes: Things sailed by very well tonight. There were a lot of issues discussed about how we played during this past week. One of the things that was important to us all was a definite quit time. With a lot of players and different time zones it had been seductive to play on and on. Tonight we stuck to our midnight est time and used our extra 30 mins of emergency time to finish the orc battle.

Lev is starting us on an Out of Play chat thread for this next week so that we can do some general character organization... looting etc. stuff.

We started late tonight by almost an hour because of one of our players not realizing that the lack of Java was causing MT to not launch. Once we solved that we were up and running quickly. Not that it's MT's fault but i would wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to have MT say something like "hey, no Java" or some such as we all can't be programmers.

Lev is going to push us to build 24/25 next week. We're all looking forward to what that might bring.

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mrobviousjosh
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Post by mrobviousjosh »

You forgot one thing- those orcs named "James" made it into the game again! Lol. Too bad we didn't get a screenshot.

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thelevitator
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Post by thelevitator »

What can I say, another fantastic account from our resident Bard disguised as a Ruffian! :D I am really grateful for Eric's efforts in sharing our experiences with everyone here and he does our group great justice. I really feel like this group clicks on all cylinders and I am glad to have every one of them in my group. :D

I'm really excited about b24 (or 25, if it becomes available in time) but I'm curious about something. If you want to have a daylight encounter outdoors with LBL for trees and obstructions, how do you do that? :?:
"Neither hexes nor squares can confine me!"

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Post by dorpond »

thelevitator wrote:I'm really excited about b24 (or 25, if it becomes available in time) but I'm curious about something. If you want to have a daylight encounter outdoors with LBL for trees and obstructions, how do you do that? :?:
Light and Vision as it is right now does not work in many different scenarios unfortunately. As many of you know, I love making MASSIVE maps where there are miles of outdoor travels and caves/buildings/dungeons mixed within that ONE map. In this unbound configuration, light and vision just doesn't work well especially when the time changes throughout the day. In my games, a party could be in one local for days, camping in the woods or looking for something - an encounter could happen during the day or during the night. As it is currently, we cannot fulfill that type of scenario and to be honest with you, it hinders me greatly.

Lighting/Vision items we really need in 1.3:

1. Ambient Lighting Switch - this switch tells Maptool what the ambient lighting is right now. If it is dark, switch it to dark; if it is daylight, switch it to daylight; and of course if it is moonlit, we would have that option too. This would tell Maptool what the light is for the whole.

2. Lighting Mask - kind of like how the FOW tool works, this tool will allow us to draw in light, dark, and lowlight areas on the map. This way Maptool will know how to handle mixed environements when vision comes into play. So for that MASSIVE outdoor map, I can switch the ambient light to Daylight but then take the Light Mask Tool and draw in DARK for the cave portion of the map. Now, no matter what the outdoor lighting is, the cave remains dark.

3. Vision Limiting - During a game, there can be many other vision imparing variables. So let's say we are outdoors durring the day and a storm moved in. the storm is such a downpour that it limits everyones vision to 100'. The way Maptool is currently, an expose would expose hundreds of feet and show way too much, ultimately screwing the game when the party sees monsters 200' away when they shouldn't. Remember, there are many users that will not want to draw VBL or may never use it. This function will allow them to expose and limit that exposure. Vision limiting is a must - it would then act as 1.2 did.

So hang in there TheLev, hopefully Trevor will find it in his heart (and find the time) to put this stuff in 1.3.
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thelevitator
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Post by thelevitator »

I'm also sending out a message through our Group page, but I thought I would post here as well. I'm using 1.3b24 for our next session tomorrow night. :D
"Neither hexes nor squares can confine me!"

James Anthony
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Double King
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Post by Double King »

Session 7: Let the Crawl begin, Again

The afternoon wears on and the sun groans burnt orange in the sky. We toss the orc camp searching for anything of value. Lucky to recover our horses but unable to make sense of our clumsy arrogance that brought us to this mess. We stack the orc bodies between the tents with the orog heads piked on staves in a circle around them as a warning to others.

Arkwood's ears prick up and his gaze steadies on the horizon. Pip too picks up the garbled yips and in the extreme distance orcs riding worgs can be seen shambling towards us. A legion of orc follow in the dust kicked up behind them. Anxious to not repeat yesterday, we rally our party, fetch our horses and steal back to the cave with one of the orc battle wagons (elven captive in tow.) And with that, we light the orc camp on fire to cloud our retreat.

Following this new dwarf, Darklord, back underground. We pass by the carnage of the crawlers and along the rim of the vile murk. A perfectly carved crypt is revealed to us. Just then, an unholy cry sounds out and a skin clad skeletal form charges from the darkness, a dead warrior concealed within half plate and charging with a large axe moves from the dark to take an oversized swing at Denton. Pip steps lightly to the left and leans in to grab the thing. Both Skeleton and Pip wrestle until the Skeleton slides out.

Image
Our first dead thing

Arkwood strokes a holy symbol hung around his neck and his lips burn with religious names. The dead thing clatters over the stone floor and its stitched body hastens a retreat. We corner it in a cul de sac and beat it to death. or, more dead?

We retire to the crypt and eye the solid iron doors with care. They are too smooth and well made. A makeshift crowbar is found and we seek further passage beyond.

...

So, tonight we switched to b24. And OH MY GOD let the problems begin. The Lev had a lot of issues running b24 with MT running on dual monitors and a couple of connections at his place. A majority of us were able to zoom in and out quickly. Both Az and I on Macs seem to have been hit last by whatever brought the Lev down. But at some point around midnight the software ground to a halt and i at last had to force quit out of everything. Early thoughts are that there may have been issues between the Lev running a larger version of b24 from the developer site where everyone else was running the 256 version offered from the link on the home page. These technical issues seem to be unique to our game last night and the Lev is taking it up with the mods separately.

Into every game a little tech must fall.

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Hawke
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Post by Hawke »

I wonder if it may have been vision related. Once a similar thing happened and removing all topo brought people back up to speed... this could be completely different.

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mrobviousjosh
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Post by mrobviousjosh »

You didn't even mention my 15' swim! Lol. It was so minor I'm not messed up about it- when the barbarian tried to save me from drowning with his whip was kinda funny though, lol.

Double King
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Post by Double King »

Boy, I sure hope not Hawke. Dropping all the topo would drop the Lev into a puddle of his own tears. A lot of us from the session are going to try to recreate everything on Friday night - out of session - and dedicate some time to just tweaking b24 in order to get some better juice out of it. If that doesn't work, there's a bingo hall online i might recommend.

...

You know Josh, there's so much that Denton does that i couldn't possibly catalog it all. Or at least Pip couldn't. And i thought better of not highlighting Denton dog paddling next to combat for two rounds - he's like the Mark Spitz of the Underdark.

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thelevitator
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Post by thelevitator »

Denton showed some brass balls jumping into that sludge since everyone had seen what came out of it!

I'm really hoping it wasn't a topo issue. The thing that doesn't make sense to me is that when I run 2 instances of MT on my laptop, 1 as GM and 1 as player, I have no issues whatsoever. I'm hopeful that it was a memory allocation issue. I don't think it was an internet issue because Aaron was connected via LAN and his MT behaved the worst of all of us. And I don't think it's the computer he's on because my desktop computer is pretty fast and I have run MT on it a ton before (while I didn't have a laptop).

I've got really smart players in my group, so I'm confident that we'll figure it out.

DK, don't even JOKE about using MT without topology! I don't think my heart could take it! :lol:
"Neither hexes nor squares can confine me!"

James Anthony
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mrobviousjosh
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Post by mrobviousjosh »

thelevitator wrote:Denton showed some brass balls jumping into that sludge since everyone had seen what came out of it!
Thanks for recognizing that fact. I clearly recall how reluctant everyone was to even skirt the water's edge a session or two ago! But, yes Eric, I realize that not every one of my character's exploits will make it into the weekly update- but this week's was a bit short. Also, he dog paddled for one round and swam behind the creature, pulling himself on shore the second. Pip was probably too busy trying to wrestle the skeletal warrior to notice though. ;)

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Azhrei
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Post by Azhrei »

And there's nothing about Kulaar joining the group.

Trevor, we had two (I think separate) issues:

1. The server's machine bogging down to the point of being unusable.

2. When one particular client went to move his token, the movement ghosting showed up but never disappeared! Even after the player had disconnected.

I also noticed that the facing markers are being drawn on the wrong layer; they are visible when the token is in an area that is currently not visible but has been explored previously. This means that the token itself can't be seen, but the facing can. Weird. :)

Double King
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Post by Double King »

nag nag nag. Not only was Kulaar the highlighted character for the screen cap but it wasn't entirely clear to me that he was a permanent new member or just sampling the vtt.

You know, Azh, you're more than welcome to post your addendum Arkwood journals here for the narrative that i miss. In fact, i'd encourage it for a different pov.

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