Haahque wrote:This was my first time seriously playing 2nd edition (not counting computer games).
Wow, what a first impression that must have been, considering not only how unconventional this game was, but also that I have house-ruled 2E to the point of almost being unrecognizable.
Haahque wrote: This one seemed to just have the stamina to keep on going even when the posts per week count dropped. (I’m impressed).
Thanks. If I've learned one thing about PBP games, is that pacing is
everything. You have to keep things moving, or people will lose interest and stop posting. As long as you can keep some kind of momentum going, any other problem can eventually be overcome. But if that momentum stops for too long, the game's over and there's no coming back.
Haahque wrote:A little off topic; but Jaded did get me back into Dungeons and Dragons Online after a fairly extended break I took, and now I play it regularly to the point where I recently got my first completionist character.
I've been meaning to try and get back into DDO, too, but I've just been so busy with STO, CK2, NWN, and Pathfinder Kingmaker.
Haahque wrote:...but it did allow for some interesting opportunities, like putting on a show (how many games have that option as anywhere near optimal?) and preparing a heist on a well-guarded treasure vault.
The performance and the heist were some of the highlights of this game, in my opinion. That Haahqae even pulled off the heist was a surprise. The odds were stacked against him, but he still managed to do it.
Haahque wrote:I felt like the dragon fight devolved pretty quickly into a simple combat with not much in terms of player options or interesting choices, but just a game of luck with low probabilities.
Yeah, this is something I've been thinking about, as well. I've been dabbling in 5E, even running a game of it over at my site, and it's starting to really dawn on me how dull and non-dynamic 2E combat can be. There's not much room for strategy, aside from simple stuff like flanking or high ground. It mostly just boils down to just making attacks, again and again and again, until you win (or lose). Granted, the Inferno battle was sort of an extreme example of that.
Haahque wrote:But what I can say is if an action is worthy of giving points to multiple divines, perhaps it should give a point to all of them?
I was thinking along the same lines. I think I was overly cautious about giving out too much favor at once, but I might have overcompensated in the other direction, and wound up giving out so little favor that it really didn't have much impact on things.
Tristen having Gobax call out for divine intervention during the Inferno fight, which again is something I've never seen a player do before, got me thinking, too, about perhaps tying that in with favor. Like, maybe if you gather enough favor, you can cash it in for intervention. Turning in a little favor might give you a slight combat bonus or something, while turning in large amounts of it might cause a divine emissary or even an avatar to show up.
The gods are supposed to play a big role in Dragonlance, after all, and that might be a way to get them more directly involved without having them completely overshadow the PCs, since they only turn up when specifically called upon.