Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot

If you wanted a boss immune to stun, you just make it immune to STUN, I'd totally would have supported that, and I've read Dan's GM guide, they don't say to make it immune to everything like you wanted to do, more just make it have Resistance to it anything the party might use, make the boss pay HP to shake off... Just making it immune to ALL status effects is way to overpowered by itself. But no, you ALSO wanted this brutal boss to be immune to also Combat Interrupts and Reactions... How isn't that overpowered? HOW? The boss splitting thing on the other hand, that was cool and I liked that part about it. No complaints about that.

And the real complaint about the whole "we're not evil" argument is more about the fact you never seemed to care that we were TRYING to be good. And if anything you wanted us to come accross as evil to everyone and everything. Failing at it, yes, I'll agree with you there, we failed badly at being good or even heroes... But from my understanding you only punished us for our mistakes without thinking a thought about any good we've done or TRY to do... Sure I'll agree we should have held us all responsible for our actions, but just think for a moment about this: You do EVERYTHING you can to save group X from really bad event. And all everyone cares else about is that you didn't think to try to save Y and Z as well.

The problem with your reasoning is that you assume interrupts aren't stuns. I don't mean stun as a condition, I mean stun as in any damage output the boss has is completely negated because the party just mass interrupts and drops status effects all over the place. You are never in threat from the boss because the boss never touched you. The one fight where the party almost all dropped wasnt even a boss fight, it was a sub boss with a bunch of minions, and the minions kicked your ass's. Why? Because you couldn't just lock them down like you did the sub boss.

Here is another common complaint too. I don't do things ' like Dan'. This is unsurprising, given that I am not in fact Dan. I like Dan's GM style, I find it to be excellent, and most importantly I find that he hold players responsible for their actions, but it's not my style. When people sit down to play a tabletop rpg, do you think they expect the GM to be 'like gygax ( who created tomb of horrors and was therefore evil ) ' or ' like lovecraft ' or ' like gibson '. I don't want to be like Dan, I want to run things my own way. There is some sort of weird messiah thing going on that because Dan was the creator of the game, that only his vision can be correct and anything done that isn't done the way Dan does it must be wrong.

I think the issue is more you don't understand how interrupts work... They don't stop the attack, only if the effect said interrupt is to stop the attack. Only they are a move that either has an effect happen before the attack happens. I've read that part on Interrupts a few times myself before I got it.

Here is how the campaign would have ended, since some of you wanted to know.
After stunlocking the boss for an easy victory, Celestia defeats her. Vespin Marble slips away in the chaos, to be found weeks later impaled on a tree branch. His organs were removed and placed into plastic bags, then put back into his body. Flashpoint is given the rank of Captain, Black Fire's egg is hatched with help from Celestia and the Royal Academy, Zeela gets her wings back and becomes head librarian in Greendale, Storm Cloud finally stops the Black Racer, and Theorycraft gains friendship. For saving the town from itself, the group finally brings harmony and peace to the people of Greendale. Old Blind Joe becomes head foreman, and unites the workers of the three major farms into a union of earth ponies and mud dogs. Ezekial the tea merchant and Augustus Grain accompany the party to a celebration of their victory in Canterlot, where Flashpoints staff begins to awaken Discord, setting the events for the canon season 2 release of Discord. Flashpoint is offered a position as guard captain for Luna's Shadowbolts. Zeela learns more zebra magic and is given a number of tomes to take back to the still wrecked Greendale library. Black Fire and his dragon wander around Canterlot learning magic from the best and brightest, and seeking the location of an elder dragon to learn more elite lore. Storm Cloud flys off into the wilderness. Theorycraft investigates Cael in jail and finds that the Balanced Chaos syndicate goes much deeper than he anticipated, and that his father was a member. His only lead left is Ezekial the tea merchant, but Cael might be lying about that as he did so many things. And behind all the scenes, more Rhino Techlord items find their way into the country....

And that would have been the start of season 2. so long and thanks for all the fish.

From how I understand the interrupt system, Zeela's moves only does damage to the attacking enemy. One effects before an ally is harmed (then ally still harmed) and the other is a Reaction that effect said enemy after she get's harmed... And again, those are her only damage dealing attacks she had going into combat. Again the ONLY stun-lock there is are thoses that use the status effect called STUN...

You keep assuming that Im talking about only you.

Then expand my thinking, tell me all the problems that were there for the whole party that you recall... Cause I still argue there was a way to have built that boss without that insane "Immune to all Status Effects AND Combat Reactions/Interrupt" idea you had. Cause I'd say all it needed was just to be immune to stun, have some resistance to ongoing, (like a 5-10 resist to ongoing) and maybe does their saving throw three times, once at the start of their turn, one at the end of their turn, and maybe one at the end/start of each round... Maybe also a HP cost to shake off status effects at will... Now that'd be a really hard boss to fight, yet not in any way unfair to the party. Might still be a bit harder then need be, but totally worthy of a Disk One Final Boss...

CS,

I'm glad we at least have some sense of closure now, but I'm still pretty bummed out about you cutting out and then canceling the campaign on us.

We all got on your case at one point or another, and I know it's no fun when you feel like you're being ganged up on by everyone else. I can see why you went for the adversarial GM approach, but it seems to me like it back-fired on you. It wasn't the reason we started to work as a team, and I think it only pushed us to be more argumentative. Personally, I think we started to work as a team only because some of us finally realized how far things were getting out of hand - due in no small part to the bad choices our party was making individually. I know it was more a - "Oh, buck! What have we been doing!" - moment than a "The GM is really out to get us!" moment that convinced me to start trying to bring the team together.

I believe I've said it before, but we always seemed rushed in our weekly sessions too, and that didn't help us to build teamwork either because I never felt like we had enough time for RPing character-interaction.

As far as the boss went, I know bosses are hard to make. I put one together for my P-Files campaign, and it was something of a nightmare (and I still don't know if it even is balanced yet). Still, I don't believe in outright immunity in a pen & paper/Skype-based RPG.

I know it happens all the time in Video Game RPGs, but the difference is that in video games, each player controls a team of fighters that hopefully balance each other out - so if one fighter's abilities are completely neutered for a boss fight, the player can still control the rest of his team and avoid feeling useless.

However, in a p&p, each player controls only one fighter, so if you make the boss completely immune to that fighter's abilities, the player is left high and dry with no way to fight and no real reason to play anymore because he can't do anything to help out - which was going to be the case with Flashpoint if you made the boss immune to damage over time effects.

It would have also neutered Zeela (as the only damaging effect she had was an reaction) and it would have completely ruined my tanking, making two of my 5 combat abilities utterly useless!

That just doesn't make for a fun experience.

There are a ton of other ways to make a boss challenging without going the immunity route. I know you don't like us bringing him up, but Dan wrote a post on Demonu's monster thread that gave a great breakdown of different ideas you could use. The monster could be able to give up a portion of health to remove a status effect (thus the status user is at least dealing some damage), the monster could get to roll to end stat effects at the beginning of it's turn, it could take multiple turns, I could see you even making it to where the boss got an improved chance to remove stat effects (maybe on a 5+ or something?), you could have even made the boss be immune most of the time - but given moments where it lets down it's guard and becomes temporarily susceptible (maybe after the players score a certain amount of damage in one shot?). The possibilities are endless.

-Oh, and you know the real reason our party nearly got wiped out against the Griffons?

For one thing, we were distracted from our normal combat routines because we wanted to use those cannons.

For another, those minions were some crazy-insane glass cannons with extremely high damage output.

And since we were busy readying cannons, we didn't bother thinning them down with our attacks.

-It wasn't that we couldn't focus one boss, it was that we were preoccupied with other things - and maybe that could be another way you make a boss battle harder - have things going on to distract us from the main fight. Maybe the kids could have been getting lowered into a cauldron of boiling blood or something, and we had to waste time messing with some lever switches instead of attacking? I don't know, but you really could have set up that boss battle better.

Also, I honestly didn't see any problem with the battle against Max Powers. It was a good challenge and a fun fight, and I don't think we really had problems with status effects that time. Even though Max threw our statuses back at us, we could still hurt him with them at least - and he nearly KO'd quite a few members of the party if I remember correctly. If our fight with Candlebright had been something more like that fight with Max, I would have been perfectly okay with it.

-Sorry again for getting on your case man, but I wanted to say my piece.

One final note -

Our party made a lot of mistakes throughout this campaign - and sure, Vespin and Flashpoint both teamed up with villains (so they weren't technically heroes anymore) - but I think the rest of us were trying our best to be good. I know we weren't the best heroes, but we were trying to do some good, and it felt like you never gave us credit for that. You only gave us credit for the bad, not the good - and I know you've got this warped sense of how D&D adventuring parties normally work - but come on! Give us some credit why don'tcha? People make mistakes, and the coolest heroes are those that have to deal with troubled and guilt-ridden pasts.

Plus, if the setting had been more friendly, we might have been more likely to be more good ourselves - but you toss us into Pony Shadowrun, and then expect us to always follow the straight and narrow? It doesn't work that way, man. That setting promoted paranoia, distrust, and disharmony (the first session ended with a serial killing, for crying out loud!). You were sending us mixed signals, so don't blame us for leaning towards the dark side.

In sum, guess what I'm trying to say is...

We may not have been the heroes Greendale needed, but we were the heroes it deserved

Well, I think everything's all done. It was a great run, even if it was full of flaws. Really, you can never predict what's going to happen in a roleplaying game. Maybe that's part of the fun of it. Even if we're not all happy with how it was played or how it ended, we should all take a second and remember the fun times we had.

So, here's the recap of the final session. The party went to the council meeting, where the vote was to be decided over the fate of the mud dogs. Theorycraft gave a speech that would be remembered among the people of Greendale for centuries (which may or may not have been a ponified version of the Martin Luther King, Jr. "I Have a Dream" speech ). Amidst the ensuing silence, the vote was cast. 4-0, with 1 vote abstained. It was official; the mud dogs were free.

Lady Candlebright, enraged at the results, used her powerful magic to send the roof crashing down on our inspiring heroes. It would have been successful, had not one lone member of the party, Black Fire (correct me if I'm wrong here), avoided the attack. Her failure only further angered her, and, revealing her vampiric nature, she teleported away.

The town was in shock. Lady Candlebright's true form had filled them with terror. But then, a light came to restore hope: none other than Princess Celestia herself, invited here by Cael. She finally explained many of the mysteries that had plagued the campaign: Lady Candlebright was actually Princess Platinum, having extended her lifespan with the use of blood magic, and Cael was not an insane murderer, but rather a loyal servant of the Crown with a somewhat warped sense of humor. However, despite this explanation, our heroes could not simply let him slide. A little research uncovered Cael's evil: the sign of the Heavenly Scales, Libra. A clear tie to the Zodiac Murders we had been studying since day 1.

It took a moment to sink in. These Zodiac signs were normally only left on... corpses. Cael began to froth at the mouth. He had poisoned his tea, and now sought to bury his secrets forever. Despite his best efforts, though, we were able to stabilize him and foil his plans. He was carried off by the Royal Guard to be interrogated later. At this, the team set their sights on Candlebright Mansion. There were bigger fish to fry.

Previously, Lady Candlebright had sent us a missive: "I have kidnapped the children of Greendale. They wait at my mansion. Come, and face me." We discussed with Celestia what we should do. Her primary worry was for the children. She decided that she would attempt to mass teleport them from the mansion, while we would engage Lady Candlebright. It would take 30 seconds, so we would have to do everything we could to defend Celestia from the vampiric princess. Thus was the plan, and it seemed nearly foolproof. The team entered the mansion and discovered it to be filled with darkness. They could only press on and search for the monster. Little did they know that the monster was already there, and she had an ace up her sleeve...

"puppeteer."

It was quiet, like a whisper, yet it was a sucker punch to the entire group. Vespin Marble, the quiet sculptor, had turned against them! He had sold his soul to the witch, and he had waited til now to strike against them. With the Staff of Domination, he had taken the mind of one of their own, Black Fire. And now, the battle began.

Unfortunately, the battle raged on more than one front. While the heroic ponies fought the Temptress and her Traitor, so too did their players combat their Ponyhandler. As hoof clashed hoof and magic clashed magic, words clashed words and anger clashed anger. Ere long, one front would have to break, and it was the human one, not the ponies, that fell. CS, angered at what he perceived to be the final straw of the party's insubordinate tendencies, ended the game. They had never fully agreed with his methodology, and their unhappiness with Lady Candlebright's defenses was simply too much. You can see this final ending here in this thread.

The story of Greendale ended, its climax unsettled. You may see where it might have gone in CS's post, here. I think it's a tragedy when a story does not have a proper ending, but sadly, irreconcilable, insurmountable differences are sometimes inevitable. I don't want to blame anyone for what happened, neither Commander Shepard nor our team. Nevertheless, I hope we can all come to terms with this and still remain friends. We'll find our way to different games; maybe we'll get the opportunity to play with each other. If we do, we can use what happened here to fix the mistakes we made and create better games in the future.

Ah, you know a game has a lot of great stuff in it if the players don't want to see it go - even after such an argument. Good to know there was that great stuff.

I look forward to hearing more tales from later pony campaigns.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:Ah, you know a game has a lot of great stuff in it if the players don't want to see it go - even after such an argument. Good to know there was that great stuff.

I look forward to hearing more tales from later pony campaigns.

Heh heh... Well, actually, I can only speak for myself. I didn't want to see it go. Other players may have been a little less satisfied with it than me. But then again, I was the one plotting against the others.

I equally wanted this to keep going.. Hell I wanted to somehow find a way to SAVE Vespin Marble in that fight. After all that's what Zeela would try to do... Hell I'm not sure what'd happen if Vespin had died... Zeela wouldn't have been able to take it. That much I'm sure of. And personally she left greendale asap and didn't wish to stay in touch with any of you after what happened if Vespin ended up dead.