[pnpgm] Game Update #13 - File #173 - Initial Dragon actions

[J Hooten]

<Apologies for all my long posts, I tend to detailed responses on 
questions. Worse its hard for me not to 'correct' something that looks 
wrong.
<And I do not know how experienced the players are here, so wanted to 
point out PnP is never hopeless. It tends to have ways to ruin plans for 
either side!
<Do not forget the Dice love to play games too, and are quite capable of 
tipping things in either direction.
<I do not know the specifics on these Sea Dragons to quote real odds and 
Raban would not know anyway so I am not letting that influence things. 
Raban has never had serious problems with any creature he encountered, 
so tends to be over confident and tries not to kill unless he must. Here 
he is in a situation where his knowledge is limits as is his skills on 
deck, it is quite likely he will make serious mistakes. But Raban does 
not worry much about that either except in how it makes him look bad in 
front of the ladies. Raban runs mostly on instincts and intuition, not 
planning. So I think I will need to adjust his actions...

<First a question: Would Raban understand that minutes to respond to a 
problem is not too long? I would suspect he is more used to time is 
critical and thus react that way. As such he would try to reach deck by 
the fastest way possible, preferably with his bow and arrows. Here is 
where his intelligence gets in his way. Where is his gear relative to 
his location so he can find his way there quickly? If others are running 
about, there is problems with him moving at all in cramped areas. So it 
is very likely he would decide to try to shorten the path by walking or 
flying through walls or floors etc. (Yes, Raban has a few tricks he 
knows little about other than they seem to work when he needs them 
too.)  It may not be a good idea in reality but Raban may not know that 
either. If he understands the risks better than I give him credit for 
then he may be more careful in just where he tries that.
<Raban may hurt himself reacting the wrong way here and I have no 
problem with that as its 'In Character'. Though it would be very bad to 
accidentally go through the ship into the water because the ship 
suddenly changed directions.

<I really should not say this...but I tend to be a devils advocate and 
point out things that could be missed for either side... Flying could 
have issues with a fast ship, once you are off the deck you have no 
friction to hold you with the ship and your inertia will quickly be lost 
to air drag and thus need to be maintained by flight speed. Thus if you 
cant fly as fast as the ship you may get left behind. Near the deck you 
are more sheltered and thus do not 'fight' as much of that effective 
wind but it will have some impact on maneuvers. Of course the ships 
magic could put an envelope around the ship so this is not such a 
problem or the propulsion wind itself may help keep fliers with the 
ship. Though that can be a problem since many ships actually travel 
faster than the wind. So if the people on deck feel a wind in their 
faces due to the speed of the ship, its bad for fliers. If the air is 
more still, then there is an air envelope moving with the ship and 
fliers work like the ship is near stationary...until they leave the 
area. Thus flying 'on' a maneuvering ship can be a serious problem 
depending on how the ship's air moves... So could be bad for Raban and 
Fremea or others.

<Sorry 3:30am here and loosing coherence. I will have to finish Raban's 
action planing tomorrow...assuming Fremea's player does not shoot me ;)