Maybe.. I should take a break for a while..

[Andre]

Malkav thanks for the e-mail you sent me earlier on too and what you had to say about me it's appreciated ...

Hmm.. ok let's do the following (albeit 8 months or so from now ) ..we'll continue to allow feats outside of the PHB ... but all the feats and ability scores people bought with RP points - I'm thinking we should get rid of that.... if it means having to rewrite your PC again at 8th or 9th or what not level then I apologize but that might be for the best ... However as far as future FG game sessions I'd like to go on rewarding RP'ing in the form of RP points .. by increasing the cost for feats to triple it's original cost (from 100 to 300 RP points), almost doubling the cost to increase ability scores (from 300 RP up to 500 RP points) and by x5 'ing the cost for skill ranks (from 20 RP to 100 RP points) I think that should help address the whole power level thing... and I'll say it again what happened with Serinda (solardawn's PC) was 100 percent my fault,I said powergaming was ok and set the purchase price for feats and what not with RP points far too low..

Yep I know the personal forum RP thing , the narrative stories, are a lot of work for a DM , but I think that's what also makes the campaign as malkav put it " fun " ... I'd prefer not to let that go .. I think if I already have all the maps and NPC stats and flavor text boxes and what not inputted into FG I'll be able to handle the campaign a lot easier especially if it's once every two weeks , though again we're probably looking at about 8 months from now before that happens at the earliest .. but I would like to keep the personal forum RP up , I have a lot of fun writing the narrative on my end too to be honest ...

What really wears me out and sends me over the edge is arguing with players over how the campaign should go , if I don't have players hollering about how upset they are about the campaign and/or creating drama with other players it goes a LONG way towards making me a happy DM so you don't see nervous breakdowns like what happened in my above posts .. not to paint him as a bad guy, the man was just expressing his opinion.. but basically darkalloy sent me a PM right after last Tuesday's (Sept 27th) FG game session indicating he was really pissed because he felt he was being railroaded, then as you can see in the posts above wanted me to change the campaign accordingly - I get the feeling solardawn wanted me to go in that direction as well.. as well as you can see above when I posted how upset and hurt I was by his PM, darkalloy's response in post number 2 above in this thread was " I'm not ashamed".. and yes he did apologize too in the above post and sort of after the fact told me he felt bad about it .. but the impression I got from him to be blunt during that initial period (by which I mean the night of the FG session mentioned above) was anger.. sheer anger... followed in the above posts by stuff that I took to mean " I think you need to run the campaign differently anyways, never mind that you're at your wits end " ... and if someone's that unhappy with my campaign having them stay in the campaign would be, I'm afraid to say, an invitation to disaster.. again though a lot can change, maybe 8 months from now he might be like " eh , not happy about the railroading but not much else going on RPG wise - why not give the campaign another shot ? " Basically if he e-mails me and says he's changed his mind about the whole railroading thing that's part and parcel of pre-written modules I'd love to have him back .. but given his aversion to railroading I don't think that's going to happen.

Solardawn.. maybe I jumped the gun on him too soon .. here's what I was referring to earlier on .. I got the impression he was pretty determined Serinda (solardawn's PC) was going to take on the thousands of dragonarmy soldiers no matter what and if Serinda died in the process so be it ... malkav565 (adam the scaled monk) and pirateking (Udyr the angry bear druid ) this was back before you joined the group , Serinda and Rin split off from the rest of the group (Serinda's fond of teleporting away to do her own thing) initially to try and slow down the dragonarmies.. then darkalloy got angry because he felt he and Serinda could quote " stop the dragonarmies cold" and they wasn't allowed to , et cetera .... I could be wrong but when solardawn decided to have serinda teleport there knowing there were thousands of dragonarmy soldiers.. I almost got the impression he was saying " Yes I know the odds are overwhelming but I'm going to buck the odds or die trying railroading be damned ! " .. which is commendable and all that but .. between that and Solardawn's comments above about being anti-railroading ... I see potential problems there as well.. in solardawn's case I could be wrong though he wasn't as vehemently anti-railroading as darkalloy was. Same thing with solardawn as with darkalloy - if he e-mails me later on and says " Ok I've changed my mind the railroading that comes inherent with pre published modules is ok with me " then I'd love to have him back as well... but again I don't think that's going to happen.. .. in the event solardawn and/or darkalloy do e-mail me to say such they'll be on the list of invited people (see below)...

Everyone else ... malkav (Adam the scaled monk), blahness (Zane the ranger), pirateking (Udyr the druid), deepfrey (Draug the highly entertaining werewolf - Adam you haven't met Draug yet ) ... when I get the game up and running again you will all definitely get invites and we can decide whether to reboot or just pick up from where we left off.

Something else I should clarify too, races from outside of PHB are obviously fine, otherwise it would be kind of hard for Zane and Adam to be in the campaign in the first place

Darkalloy and solardawn haven't responded to the posts above so I'm going to assume they're upset with me, and to be honest I can't really blame them .... malkav I appreciate what you said but in a way they're right, there are DM's out there who are better than me, which is I think the kind of DM they are looking for - I'm simply not up to snuff from their point of view and I accept and own that ... however if they're both upset with me I think it would be .. awkward.. to say the least if I continued on in solardawn's game - I'd love to stay in it don't get me wrong I'm not trying to be a "drama queen" or anything by dropping out I genuinely like solardawn's game and I love gaming with you guys ! .. but if the DM (solardawn) is upset with me and another player (darkalloy) is upset with me - that's 2 people right off the bat in the solardawn group who are not going to be too happy with me and if I stay in there it could get.. awkward.. to say the least... if solardawn e-mails me with something to the effect that I'm wrong and he has no problem with me being there, I"ll be there next Tuesday but .... after your DM has a hysterical nervous breakdown on the forums and starts wailing about how you think he's not good enough as a DM (see reply number twelve of mine above in this thread) I can understand how solardawn might feel a bit awkward having said DM as a player in his campaign - not to mention pissed at what I said in post 12 above which is totally understandable .. put it this way - if I don't hear back from solardawn I understand, I really do .. I can understand him being miffed with what I posted above.

I DID mean what I said about solardawn being a great DM and this being a great group of players though .. for what my humble opinion is worth I strongly encourage everyone to be there next Tuesday for solardawn's game - which I'm assuming all you guys would do in the first place I doubt everyone's going to drop out just cause I'm not there , I don't have THAT overblown an opinion of myself .. no, I say that mainly to let people know for what it's worth where I stand on solardawn's campaign - he's a great DM and I had a lot of fun in it for the few game sessions I've been there.. at the risk of embarassing solardawn (well he made this info public anyways in his last FG game session so I guess it's ok to recap it here anyways ) ... the man was hospitalized with a potential heart condition earlier on that day and STILL showed up to DM, and he's in the netherlands so that was at like 1 am in the morning his time ! He's also unemployed due to his boss at work screwing him over (personally I hope that boss gets what she deserves which is nothing good) and he's still running his campaign - THAT'S dedication ! And very admirable to boot..

So.. I guess , for the time being at least.. this is it. I had a BLAST gaming with all of you as I mentioned above (and that includes solardawn and darkalloy too of course , there are a lot of admirable things about them both ).... I wish you all the best in the months to come and - you will be hearing from me later on once I get all this stuff inputted into FG ... Andre

[darkalloy]

Well, to tell the truth I was going to post a normal response. A lot of stuff went on today/yesterday.... breaking my foot for instance(Which I must say hurts like hell as all they could do was wrap it up so I have to walk on a broken foot.) However, after this previous post by you Andre, I can tell you before I wasn't even close to angry now however I have past plain angry and went strait to livid.

Now I don't care one way or the other whether you keep going in Solar's game or not, this won't effect my RP one bit Thoihel is going to continue being a bitch to just about everyone regardless that's how she is. I'm not so immature as to pick on someone in any game or even try to make that game less fun for them. You have every right to be in Solar's game as I do. However you stating you're not going to show because you assume the player you have called the most mature on many occasions is going to do a such childish thing as ruin a game for someone else leads me to believe you really think that all your players are nothing but a bunch of temperamental children. I intentionally intended my PM to you to let you know I was upset, when something upsets you the mature thing to do is let someone know. As the receiver of the information of the mature thing to do would be talk it out in private with the person not blurt it out. Yes I know I am the one who identified myself, however I know the others are smart enough to know it was me regardless. We aren't stupid Andre. Now you may thing this anger is going to transfer over into solar's game despite what I have said, now while things might now be cheery between us, I'm going to be polite and this anger is going to be gone by that time I assure you.

Andre, you're a great player, however your not the greatest DM. I'm not talking about the railroading or anything like that just push that off to the side and forget about it. I'm talking about you're responses to upset players. Cas had to go that was a given, but Madeliane, Mel, Buddha(Who I admit I found a bit odd. No offense if you read this Buddha.),Lizzy (Nydhogs wife), and Forman(Whom of the life of me I could never remember his forum name) didn't have to go. Simply working it out with them would have done wonders. However Andre when someone even thinks about being upset it seems to deeply hurt you and they need to apologize to you after you make some great "Pity me for I'm a father" wall of text. I'm ashamed I even felt guilty for upsetting you now when that was not my intent.... Grow up Andre, you're 40 not 4. You tell us to roll with the punches all the time and for the most part we do, you need to do the same as people are always going to get upset with you or the game at some point it's the way people are. You're the DM as well, that doesn't mean "Oh Blameless God, all the problems are our folly for we are thine loyal players." It means you not only have to be the one to run the game but if some one is upset talk to them about it and try to sort it out. Keep up your pity walls and I can see many people leaving the game. While yes you may not be up to my DM standards I can muddle through, however I get the feeling your player standards are impossible to meet. As far as I can tell you want players who never question you and kiss the ground you walk on, I mean no offense to any of you currently on Andre's re-invite list, as I just have a nasty feeling that you may be kicked out sooner or later once the game starts back up.


Don't bother about waiting for that email from me Andre, it won't ever come. Oh and if the forums seem to change there is a good reason for that, anything even remotely related to me or Rin is gone. While I wont delete anyone else's posts all mine are gone period, I don't want Andre twisting Rin into a villain for when he comes back with a possible reboot I'm not going to let my creation become bastardized by a whiny DM holding a grudge. I'm out, see you all Tuesday for Solar's game should be a blast as a few of us should have hit level 3.

[Andre]

Sept 30, 2011 5:45:21 GMT -5 @darkalloy said:

I mean no offense to any of you currently on Andre's re-invite list, as I just have a nasty feeling that you may be kicked out sooner or later once the game starts back up.

I don't think I would necessarily generalize and assume I'm going to kick EVERY player out sooner or later just because darkalloy had a negative experience ... but to recap what he talked about above :

- Madelaine.... madelaine chose to leave on her own .. she was a rather .. odd.. case. She got SUPER upset - in real life as a player - because a fellow PC licked her PC in an attempt to convince a red dragon that the PC's were really bad guys and Madelaine's PC was a slave.. she whispered to me in FG that she was inches away from destroying the other PC in question who licked her, then she refused to RP on the forums for a while.. when I confronted her about this her response was " I cry when my character cries, sorry if that's too wierd for you " ... later on she wouldn't back down from a fight with a crazy red dragon who ended up going poo on her PC and blahness98's PC, Zane... Zane said he wasn't particularly offended by it ... Madelaine on the other hand said that I , the DM , was going poo poo on her , the player ... basicall I told her she was having a hard time seperating the game from herself as a real person, she got pissed and she quit.

- Mel was Madelaine's girlfriend and when she quit she stated flat out she was in the game only because Madelaine had a high opinion of me - basically I got the impression if Madelaine was out then Mel was going to be out too .

- Nydhog's girlfriend pretty much ignored my whole " Please don't piss off the good aligned PC's " request and killed a helpless prisoner right in front of the other PC's - when I confronted her about this she resigned from the group.

- I didn't ask Forman to leave the group I begged and pleaded with him to come up with a PC who would be easier for other PC's to RP with - he got upset and left the group... as well darkalloy sent me a PM saying he was rather unhappy with Forman not acting in a good aligned manner (beating up - or attempting to beat up - NPC's ) ...

- Buddha .... basically Buddha got upset when I asked him to let us know when his skype chat with his girlfriend in China was done so he could join us for FG ( he maintained that he wanted to chat with the girlfriend on skype and play FG at the same time, I told him this wasn't really possible because he needed to hear me on skype since I make DM announcements on there using voice from time to time).. he got upset, gave a one word explanation " Drop ! " on skype and vanished - when I confronted him and told him I didn't think this was mature he responded his girlfriend came first and eventually got upset and left the group. I was warned by another player in the group too whom Buddha had gamed with before that Buddha tends to "flake out " of groups he's in .

Also to clarify, with all five players mentioned above they all left of their own accord I didn't kick them out (darkalloy mentioned above that I'm going to start kicking out players).. It's true I did refer to darkalloy as very mature in comparison to the above players I talked about who are no longer with the group - right up until recently with the being angry over being railroaded thing.. that's why his angry PM hurt so much on a personal level on my part, it was completely unexpected. You'll also notice I didn't refer to darkalloy as "immature" at any point in this thread, I'm not sure if he's implying I was calling him immature?

I won't lie, I was a lot more confrontational with players whom I felt were being immature in the past than I am nowadays ... basically was working my butt off trying to run the campaign then you'd have issues like the one with Madelaine above for example ... with respect .. I have the feeling there are a LOT of FG players out there who simply aren't that mature .. people might have noticed FG groups tend to fall apart sooner or later, sometimes because the players involved just aren't very grown up people, so you end up with an FG game that runs for a month or two then caves... In comparision this campaign ran for over a year - given that, you're bound to encounter a number of people for whom the campaign / me as a DM simply do not work. The trial and error process basically.

I meant what I said earlier - I think the current group of players is great and it kills me to walk away from this, I will consider myself to be very lucky if all of you are free and still interested when I'm able to pick things up later on ... darkalloy was.. upset, you can tell that from his post above, I kind of think his attack on me got rather personal in the above post ... I'd like to think my earlier posts in this thread about darkalloy weren't as personal as his reply post above - I dunno I could be wrong I guess I'll let you guys decide that.. I spent a lot of time talking about how hurt I was by darkalloy and how angry I thought he was that was pretty much it as far as I can tell ... but I think me volleying a "return attack" at darkalloy so to speak would be kind of tasteless on my part, not to mention the fact that I'm really not inclined to do that in the first place, just don't have the heart for it .. Like everyone else here he was a great player too while he was here right up until the being-angry-over-being-railroaded thing .. but he's made it pretty clear that he's not interested in the campaign at this point so I think it's safe to cross him off the "invite" list.

Again everyone else I will contact you when I'm at a point where I have the campaign up and running again .. I'm going to take the liberty of contacting solardawn too btw at that point, I'm beginning to think I really jumped the gun and assumed he's more against the whole railroading thing than he really is , my apologies to him for that ... speaking of solardawn he says he has no problem with me being in his campaign as a player so yay, thanks for that solardawn I will continue to game with you guys just in a non-DM capacity for right now !

Again thanks to everyone (you too darkalloy) for making the campaign so much fun up until now - you're great players and you made it a HELL of a lot of fun for me ! Here's hoping we can pick up where we left off later on in the future ...

[Andre]

Also as an FYI I don't make EVERY PC evil once their player leaves the campaign ... Za'era (Madelaine's character) was actually a fixture in Serinda (solardawn's PC - Serinda and Za'era were lovers basically) 's visits to the future and she's definitely not evil, more along the lines a very senior member of the clerics of Mishakal ( a good aligned goddess)... I didn't turn Adam (malkav's PC) evil when malkav took a break from the group either ... Sangrias and Azcot (both former PC's) had such a dark side to them however - the former a cold, suspicious " I don;'t trust any of you" kind of person who told a child whose mother had been murdered (then molested) right in front of the child's eyes to " go back to crying over the corpse of your mother you little snot " ... the latter a PC whom, by the player's own definition, had to fight against his " red dragon" urges (Azcot was a half dragon) ... the two just seemed a natural fit to turn to the dark side.. Mel's character the happy go lucky kender isn't evil either (an evil kender? Those familiar with the dragonlance novels might end up chuckling at the concept ) ... just wanted to clear that up, if you leave the campaign for whatever reason your PC does NOT automatically become evil .. in Rin's case I'll probably just have the Tower of High Sorcery show up , say " All right you're taking your official Test of High Sorcery NOW " and whisk him away.. in the future Rin goes on to become a rock superstar basically but that's many years after the campaign is over ...

[Andre]

and apologies to solardawn too, was stupid of me to assume he was upset when he was in fact not - as solardawn himself put it to me " not to sound blunt but if I didn't want you in my game I would have kicked you out myself ". .. obviously it was pretty dumb of me to assume he was upset with me .. that was an overly emotional reaction on my part - I had a mild panic attack which I get from time to time (difficulty breathing, feel like you're dizzy, going to faint et cetera) and had a heck of a time sleeping that night right after posting that which I guess shows you my state of mind at the time (not rational) - I guess I should probably take a little break from the DM'ing thing here

[Andre]

One other thing too .. I could be wrong but I think darkalloy thought I was implying that darkalloy would be "petty" or otherwise act in a negative fashion towards me when I was uncertain if I should be in solardawn's game (see above post) .. I can see how it would come across that way so I should apologize to him for that .. what I meant was more along the lines of this (and this is probably what I should have said originally) ... I wouldn't have wanted to impose myself on darkalloy and solardawn if they were upset with me so I wasn't sure if my presence in the solardawn game would have been appropriate ... it's kind of uncomfortable if you have a player in the group that you don't like and I didn't want to put anyone through that .. but solardawn says he's ok with me being in the campaign (again solardawn my apologies for assuming otherwise) and unless i'm wrong I get the impression aside from darkalloy no one else is upset with me so - show up for solardawn's game next week Tuesday and hope all goes well ? I guess that's what I'll do.

And I am sorry that darkalloy broke his foot that sucks , don't think he's reading this thread anymore but I should say it anyways - from what I understand breaks like that don't heal and not much you can do to treat it .... so after my initial " boy that seemed like a really personal sort of attack" response to his post above now I can see how someone in pain might post something like that.. not to say he meant all of it, not to say he didn't mean all of it , I'm uncertain so I'll leave that up to darkalloy I guess.

Anyways it seems like it's a done deal - issue invites to everyone except darkalloy an (admittedly long) while from now (not that I'm trying to be petty with darkalloy but I think he made it pretty clear he doesn't want to be in the dragonlance campaign) and continue in solardawn's game in the meantime - see you all next tuesday in solardawn's game !

[Andre]

arrgghhh I need to stop putting my foot in my mouth ! One more thing ... I mentioned something about darkalloy being the most mature among all the players - amend that to " most mature out of all the players in the group at the time in the campaign that he was talking about " (that is in comparison to the other players he mentioned who left .. my feeling is that ALL the players left at this point - our current roster up until last week Tues Sept 27th - fall into the "mature " category far as I'm concerned... not to say darkalloy is immature either, not sure what to say about him at all now that he's left the campaign actually ...