Huh. (Heavy stuff, be prepared.)

[Ghost of Bob]

Group,

I am more deeply affected by the events of this last game because of other stresses on my life currently. I am going to post some thoughts concerning game balance because the game has not been fun for a while now.

This current venture was poorly thought out for the party thrown into it. Why weren't we warned about facing major demons, elder vampire lord spell casters and undead when we were asked to decide on what to do? Everyone on the planet knew when armed aircraft were introduced into warfare, the same with missiles, chemical agents, and nuclear weapons. Why weren't there rumors to warn us ahead of time? I was given the choice between the Temple of Elemental Evil (Dave style) or "a battle against an Orc army".

Huh. You should just electrocute me and call me a Scientologist for the amount of gullibility I manifested when I believed the advertising. WTF.

I was looking forward to a fight, albeit a big one with lots of Orcs and their normal allies. That seemed much better than facing undead and what-not at the TEE for a fighter in DavidLand where druids are touted as better than clerics. At least clerics should be able to turn undead. (Not so much with our clerics, it became clear.) A purely physical fight it was then.

But alas, PSYCH! It was the Northern Campus of TEE disguised and packaged as a military campaign and with a time limit as a bonus.

I have been irked by the inability of the group to heal the members back up to full and by the unavailability of healing items better than basic healing potions and the occasional scroll. When characters have 80HP and face foes which can do 26 points of damage in a single attack, the 2D4+2 or 1D8 is like a band-aid in place of a suture. There should be a higher frequency of potions of extra-healing or better when the damage mill gets really hefty.

Whatever.

Bob getting killed on a hopeless mission when we had NO CHANCE OF SUCCEEDING is simply the icing on my personal cake. I was needing the Sunday game to provide a little levity and fantasy in the face of crushing gloom.

At work, we are facing a system-wide $1B cut in three months. This means $39M to my campus, which means 30% of our staff and management will be permanently laid off. Unavoidably. The work environment is better in most mortuaries than on campus, because at least there you know which ones are dead.

Personally, I was provided an 90% likelihood prognosis of prostate cancer then given a month to wait for a biopsy (10 more days to wait) to determine the severity, malignancy, or presence (10% chance for a false positive - I retook the screening test with the same result bot times, so more likely a 1% chance) of the cancer.

The inability of success in the Sunday game is providing an additional level of despair I can scarcely afford right now. The ending of the hopes and plans I had for Bob is taking an inordinate toll on my 'entertainment' time to escape the bigger, more serious issues in my life. Therapeutically, I can do better things for myself.

I enjoy my time with you socially and really like the group as people (even though some of your playing habits wind me up), but the actual activity is unhealthy for me at this point in time.

That said, there is no way Anwar would choose to continue on in this suicide squad and will take Mikhail up on the enrollment at Psy U, then upon graduation, will return home to city life in Malik

Tina doesn't make sense for this group any more than Minasti does.

I cannot deal with the mortality rate for 1st level characters right now, so I will be taking a hiatus from the game for a bit until the uncertainties in my life decline a bit.

This is not sour grapes. It's only a game and I have played and lost thousands of games. I simply need something uplifting and light right now and this isn't either.

I will drop by to say hello occasionally, but need a yoga class more right now.

My respect and best wishes,
See you soon,
Adam

[David]

Howdy Adam and EVERYONE,

Adam, I understand where you are and really hope things get better. Take care of yourself. I've had my share of "stress cake" both of late and in the past. Find some chill place and go for it.

As for the game, other than Adam and Jeremy, I think everyone else knew what the Orc-Wars entailed. This was at least the tenth such game I've run; the last was Jovian Falls about nine months ago. Please note, I only had to describe a couple of characteristics of each demon before most of the players were mumbling, "oh, a babau" or "type IV." Everyone else playing has been on other, similar games, and I was lifting pretty straight out of the TSR game-aid "Iuz the Evil." Ironically, those games are actually similar to and linked with the original version of the Temple of Elemental Evil (I dunno about the new version, cuz I don't have a copy). TEE is dungeon based and this one starts out outside, but becomes cavern-based. But in both, you graduate from orcs to ogres (or orogs, cuz I was trying to be kind), to trolls to giants, and then to elementals and/or demons (clearly, in the war, it's only demons). Throughout are peppered undead of all sorts -- vampires and spectres are in both, as are demi-god-level demons... Personally, compared to the text, I was actually going somewhat easy on the party.

That said, yeah, the game was a bit of a mess. Part of the problem is that no one was paying much attention and sort of treating the game like a "bus" -- get on, the story carries you somewhere on it's own, you look at the window at the scenery of "destruction and success," get off, you get rewards for riding, all is good. But, like most mid-level games (and any survey of published modules) the players needed to pony-up and take some ownership to make sure that they don't do "bumbling" things or fall into traps or behave unwisely. I will completely agree that this was NOT the case both yesterday AND on the previous couple of weekends.

Can the players do it? Yup, as the players on Abydos, New Heroes, Alternate Heroes, Elf Game, Greek game (in three parts!), Panthiad, Charn, etc can attest. But, yes, there has been a large amount of "I thought it was your turn to think for me" on Sundays. Hopefully, folks will get the message, although that was never my intent.

The attack on the orc-lair was hardly suicidal or impossible. That you met almost no opposition on the way out shows that the place is nearly deserted, thanks to the party. The mission to save Dion was more problematic, but it was also partially motivated but a couple of lame moves ("hello, Mr vampire, I'm the guy you're here to kill. Come get me. I can't protect myself." AND searching for treasure during a rescue mission with no one on guard) and bad tactics (Jeff was probably right -- sending a couple of people ahead who could see in the dark to box in the vampire was probably better than the whole [loud and illuminated and slow] group thundering along and letting him know where you are and that you were coming). Being down both River and Svala didn't help either, though Kyre did help a little.

In the healing department, well, short of having a staff of clerics about twice the party's level, you guys are actually blessed. I'm not sure what rules other groups play with, but in the core Dnd rules, clerics aren't great healers -- that role falls to the druid, who has curative spells at 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th as well as more spells in general AND (usually) herbalism as well. You guys had TWO druids AND a cleric AND a psionic healer who would bump folks up an additional 30hps or so each day. Plus, I don't require PCs to call their spells in advance. Without heal spells, even Pope Hazem and Theocrat Arlinoth would have been sore-pressed to keep up with your party's hit point recovery rate... Heck, as he alluded to in his first monologue, the whole REASON the vampire was coming for the cleric and druid was to curtail the party's healing ability!

Where to go from here? Hopefully up. I'll post a status in a summary message of the game.

Thanks,
David