Midwest Zoom (Oct 16th '21 ???)

[Kurgan]

It's after 3pm and nobody has joined, so we'll try again tomorrow.


Edit: Oh I get it now, tonight is not a "lucky" night for dice... is that it?

[Kurgan]

And that's game! iKarith showed for Session A (today) and we tried having him play as a single hero completing Quest 5 (Melar's Maze; in a surprising turn of events, played as written, circa 1990) this time.

The game took just under 3 hours (all monsters defeated, made it back to the stairs), as we didn't do any special modifications to movement (if we had, probably could have cut the time down to 90 mins easily). Being that he was a Champion (substituting 1 black die when he used his Hand Axe) and borrowed some gear (but not gold) from the other three heroes we were working with, he did quite well. As Zargon, I did forget to roll for Elites with the first few months, but still got some of my licks in with Combat Cards and the Zargon Deck. The Lone Monster ("parley") option was invoked once to get a Healing Potion from a fleeing Skeleton. Ending up not using his Combat Cards (Disarm & Capture; Footwork). He had some tremendous armor (Borin's Armor, Helmet, Shield) as well as a Crossbow, and a Spear (that was sold, not having found a proper use).

He saved enough gold to get himself a Whip, so may be humming the Indiana Jones theme music in a future quest...

We also discovered that having "lone quests" like this is a great way to drain a Hero of some of his stockpiled potions!

So now there's another Talisman of Lore located!

[iKarith]

And that's game! iKarith showed for Session A (today) and we tried having him play as a single hero completing Quest 5 (Melar's Maze; in a surprising turn of events, played as written, circa 1990) this time.

The game took just under 3 hours (all monsters defeated, made it back to the stairs), as we didn't do any special modifications to movement (if we had, probably could have cut the time down to 90 mins easily). Being that he was a Champion (substituting 1 black die when he used his Hand Axe) and borrowed some gear (but not gold) from the other three heroes we were working with, he did quite well. As Zargon, I did forget to roll for Elites with the first few months, but still got some of my licks in with Combat Cards and the Zargon Deck. The Lone Monster ("parley") option was invoked once to get a Healing Potion from a fleeing Skeleton. Ending up not using his Combat Cards (Disarm & Capture; Footwork). He had some tremendous armor (Borin's Armor, Helmet, Shield) as well as a Crossbow, and a Spear (that was sold, not having found a proper use).

He saved enough gold to get himself a Whip, so may be humming the Indiana Jones theme music in a future quest...

We also discovered that having "lone quests" like this is a great way to drain a Hero of some of his stockpiled potions!

So now there's another Talisman of Lore located!

We played it as written because … I actually started in at quest 6 all those years ago, actually. And while I've seen the whole quest book since, all I really remembered was "Huh, I bet that space has a pit (on the other side of the door from the gargoyle…" IT DID! Well technically I knew something else.

"Inside you see a gargoyle … and a door."
"Is the gargoyle a monster or is it furniture?"
"It's a gargoyle."
"So … it be furniture now, but there'll be a monster breathin' down me neck just as I open either tha' yon door or the chest inside…"
"We'll have to see."

No accounting for genre-savviness.

[Kurgan]

I'll be around the first two weekends of Sept, then I won't be able to do a game until the 2nd, 3rd and 4th weekends of Oct. November might be the month the remake ships out, but we'll see what happens (many are speculating they won't even make it in time for Christmas).

[iKarith]

I'll be up for the 4th (maybe the 3rd) and the 11th (and maybe the 10th)…

We're also thinking about Twitch if y'all wanna spectate and snark from the peanut gallery. May not even be potentially possible before October due to I don't know if Kurgan's had a chance to poke at it yet. And probably I'm gonna have to be the one to stream it because my internet connection is better.

Just a thing to keep in mind for the future!

[Kurgan]

Thanks iKarith. I have only done some preliminary work into Twitch as a possible platform to use for a public game or two or more. The main issue I'm having is that recent editions of OBS and Zoom don't seem to play well together. Where before I could seemingly use my three webcams together on a single monitor and share them between the two (switching on the fly with hotkeys), now it seems to want to only use at most two cameras on one application! I've tried various windows apps that claim to be able to share them but they don't do the job or are incompatible with OBS & Zoom, so it's been quite frustrating, so I set them aside for a few days.

The idea of someone else like yourself recording it sounds cool, if again we can get it going. It's a lot slower having to switch cameras manually, though if being stuck with just one camera isn't so bad, that can be done as well (it involves moving it around physically on my desk... I haven't bought or built any new fancy rigs).

Even just a first low budget clumsy attempt might be something and if people wanted to watch it back later at triple speed, I could understand that.

I'm new to the platform so I'm not even sure what we're proposing (an all physical presentation of the game but with multiple remote players) has been done before except with some game where only the GM has the game assets at hand, or else everyone is "really" all sitting at the same physical table and we're just seeing a filmed version of it so to speak from different angles.

But it would be my dream to do something like that someday, maybe we can take those first steps between now and Christmas vacation...

Edit: I see a new version of Zoom is out (gets updated frequently), I can see if maybe they fixed it. First attempt has failed, unless they've changed the way the two are supposed to work together (all the OBS virtual camera options never worked for me, I always just shared one camera as a multiples. It's weird.

[iKarith]

Theoretically if we were both using OBS and twitch, we wouldn't need Zoom at all.

[Kurgan]

I ran into similar issues there, but again, I'm a n00b to the platform so I may be missing something, and I'm happy to learn if you'll teach me. Also, congrats on joining the Inn team, in whatever capacity, if I'm reading that right!

If I'm required to have two monitors and two computers for all this, then it'll be awhile before I can do what I want, but there must be a way to get it back again...

I also have an external, powered USB hub, I was thinking maybe it was a lack of power or something but that doesn't explain why the setup worked prior to the last update or two! Then again I've been getting these weird crashes in windows as well, making me think somehow there's a display driver issue. Still, it's not enough to make me start all over again and learn linux.

If Zoom is the problem and Twitch will solve it, then Twitch it is. Whatever gets the job done (ideally for free, with minimal hassle).

The thing with OBS is that I see there are multiple versions. There's the main program which I've been using then there are a couple of apps also called OBS (I use the 64 bit version of OBS Studio). I wouldn't mind talking about it some more with you and see what we can come up with if you're used to it.

[iKarith]

I ran into similar issues there, but again, I'm a n00b to the platform so I may be missing something, and I'm happy to learn if you'll teach me. Also, congrats on joining the Inn team, in whatever capacity, if I'm reading that right!

If I'm required to have two monitors and two computers for all this, then it'll be awhile before I can do what I want, but there must be a way to get it back again...

I also have an external, powered USB hub, I was thinking maybe it was a lack of power or something but that doesn't explain why the setup worked prior to the last update or two! Then again I've been getting these weird crashes in windows as well, making me think somehow there's a display driver issue. Still, it's not enough to make me start all over again and learn linux.

If Zoom is the problem and Twitch will solve it, then Twitch it is. Whatever gets the job done (ideally for free, with minimal hassle).

The thing with OBS is that I see there are multiple versions. There's the main program which I've been using then there are a couple of apps also called OBS (I use the 64 bit version of OBS Studio). I wouldn't mind talking about it some more with you and see what we can come up with if you're used to it.

I use just the basic OBS Studio, but I'm using it on Linux so things don't quite 100% line up with Windows. (I also use just the Zoom client, but our version is I think a little older.) If I'm still here to do so, I'd be happy to discuss details with anyone here so that they might help others, because I intend to sort them out at some point in the near future for my own purposes anyway.

That might not happen though. I'm pretty rattled by the "anyone who opposes this off-topic group whose off-topic activities pose a non-consensual life/safety danger to others doesn't belong here". The same has been expressed in two other unrelated forums I participated in over the past three days. Those who objected were sacked and ejected from them. It's starting to look like a virtual purge. History suggests this is a Bad Sign.

I didn't speak up in those (I was AFK when it happened), but I spoke up here. It … seems to be headed in the same direction. I dunno, I used some rather coarse language in objecting and a calmer head would say that I probably went a little too far in doing so, but the mod in question has generally been friendly otherwise and decided not to be this time (and has also expressed a more mild form of the same us-vs.-all-opposition attitude elsewhere), so … is this becoming a pattern? A virtual purge of dissent?

So I'm leaving the board for a few days. I'd rather presume I've misjudged. But it kind of looks like one guy, who's been a bit of an ass in my opinion, has given others license to paint all dissent with a broad brush as a means of painting their targets. My interest in this game has a LOT to do with trying to escape toxic political extremes which presently seem to favor splattering people's brains on one side or infecting them with a deadly plague on the other, all to prove a point. No thank you, can we try turning the world off and back on again pls?

If I haven't misjudged things … well, then I really don't belong here, do I? I'll be glad to be physically sickened by the state of the world somewhere else.

[Kurgan]

I'm happy to keep the heavy stuff (read: drama) out of my games and nobody has crossed the line on my watch, but private games are private, I wouldn't discourage anyone from participating as long as they love playing Hero Quest. So one's standing on the forum has no bearing on what we do in our games.

I'd hate to see you quit the forums for good iKarith, but even so you're always welcome to play with us if you decide to move on from here. But taking a break? I can't blame you. From the looks of it there a lot of cooling down that needs to be done, so take whatever time you need, just don't be a stranger.