Hey ajtazt, firstly, I want to say thanks for taking the time to write your post. I know it would have been easier to just say I’m doing a bad job, or simply drop out, but the fact that you clearly put a lot of time and thought into this is really appreciated.
To start,
I think you’re right in saying that this ^ has a lot of problems. When I wrote about the sun, I didn’t mean to imply that all of the characters would be able to see the sun, just denote what time of day it was, but I can see how that caused confusion. Another problem is that the players hearing “groaning” implies there’s quite a few other survivors, when in reality there really aren’t. I definitely should have done a better job of both planning and explaining the exact state of the crash, which would have made starting areas a lot less confusing.
Again, this was just sloppy on my part. Having clones start in a selection of pre-set starting points would have helped a lot here, and I should have been more patient and thorough in planning the start. Truth be told (as is obvious with a lot of the problems you’ve pointed out) they got to the bridge because someone had to go to the bridge, and I figured if they were in the back of the hanger, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to have them be near the bridge. But I recognize that I shouldn’t be lying on stretching things like this, I should be planning them better.
I had meant to describe more about the crash site and the surrounding jungle area as the clones started exploring, but I got caught up in the start, and forgot to expand on this before stuff started happening.
I wasn’t too sure what to about this one, because while at the time I recognized that Boomstick getting to Duke so quickly was unrealistic, making GoodGuy just have Boomstick walk by himself for 3 or 4 posts seemed kind of boring for GoodGuy. This isn’t to say that I’m willing to throw out all reason in the service of keeping all the players happy, I’m just not sure where to draw that line between realism and an engaging game. In hindsight this problem probably could have been fixed if I had laid out the map better, that way GoodGuy as a player would have known Boomstick couldn’t have easily met up with Duke, and instead stay with the others. But even in this scenario that’s a little meta-gamey because Boomstick wouldn’t know the distance between him and Duke, so I’m not what would have been the ideal way to handle this.
I really thought that at some point Saddle had reported reaching the rendezvous point, but going back and checking, I think you’re right, and it doesn’t look like this ever happened. I didn’t properly check before posting, and that’s on me.
I purposely wanted to keep whether or not they had been spotted by the droids ambiguous, but I should have done a better job of explaining their actions. I meant for the droids to approach from the jungle (coming from the direction of the base, so I really should have better explained what direction that was), overshoot the Venator, and then split up to scan each third of the ship individually.
In my mind, the Vultures would have some sort of com/connection system for communication and knowing where each other are, so they would have been alerted of the droid’s destruction.
Again, I should have done a better job of explaining what the end of the hanger looked like, and the distances of everything. The tip of the ship is broken off, meaning there is a hole at the frond of the hangar leading to the debris of the ships tip, which would be the rendezvous point. I thought Duke knew Saddle was there, and therefore would have known the droids were there, which you pointed out to be incorrect because Saddle never mentioned he was at the rendezvous point.
At the time I had realized that a rocket should have probably taken the droid out, but was just afraid that the encounter would end too quickly, so instead I compromised even though I should have just let what should have happened, happen. I’m really sorry about this one, it’s not proper GMing.
I think it’s reasonable that the droid would still want to investigate the area where the other droid was destroyed, though looking back, I agree it’d be more likely that it’s attention would be diverted to the area of the most recent attack.
Again, I should have better thought out/explained the spacing.
I should have done a better job of laying out the droid’s attack pattern and the battlefield. As for a response, I was expecting Buoy and Saddle to take cover and return fire at the droid, but I can see how I put you in a pretty frustrating position with my lack of details. Furthermore, I’m starting to see that simply having enemies vaguely “fire” at you isn’t a good way to do combat, because then it puts the decision of if the shots hit or miss entirely on the players, when in reality I think I should be directing most of that, or at the very least giving better cues as to what is going on.
Again, thank you for taking the time to give a thoughtful response. I owe all of you an apology for not planning and explaining things well, and not attempting to fix it earlier when it became more apparent as a problem. I hope my response cleared up a few reasons behind the problems. I also made some bad decisions when it comes to Tesz and her crew, and I’m not yet sure how I’ll resolve them timing wise. I won’t be available tomorrow, but I will try and work on better explaining the current spacial situation, maybe with some sort of visual map. Taking this approach going forward may been longer waits between GM posts, but I think you’ve made it clear that’s a sacrifice worth making. If you all have any ideas as to how to help this, I’m all ears. Again, I’m really sorry about this guys, and I’ll try to do a better job of it going forward. Your patience and advice is really appreciated 