I do understand the notion, I am simply at the point in meta of, "Why did we bother for so long with planning if we could have just cut a swathe through them and had about the same odds?" I have to hope there's [i]something[/i] about this mill in the story that is of importance.

Another issue in the meta, that I would like to push to all present, is that we should use normal experience points rather than milestone leveling. This game has been going on for one year - an entire [i]year[/i] - and we are still 1st level characters on our first adventure in our first module. This strikes me in such a way that I can only describe best as disappointing. I am fairly confident just based on the sheer number of encounters we have had, that we should be much further along in mechanical character progression for this level bracket, but we aren't. I understand tracking and calculating experience points might be slightly more difficult, but we are playing Dungeons and Dragons where basic arithmetic is to be expected and our numbers as a whole should not vary much.

This is not to say our characters haven't progressed since we started, but there's a startling amount of development there that is not reflected at all in their physical person within the system. I would say they're close to 3rd or so level in that regard, if I had to give it some arbitrary and ultimately meaningless number. There's quite a few dynamics and changes that have happened to and with them. Experience points are not just exclusively "enemies defeated by the chart" as they too reflect these stories.

But one might wonder what I mean by all this, to which I will say in explicit. 

First, I advocate going to true experience points. Second, we need to cease beating around the bush with things, delaying posts, waiting, hesitating, and the ilk. Third, the group needs to commit to [i]something[/i], by which I mean being all in, even if we aren't in favor of it and communicating that; in essence, "Don't split the party". Fourth and lastly, we need to be more active overall in the out-of-character section. Everything is too dead silent here, even lacking in banter.