Hi!

This thread is in response to Wesley Schneider's request over at ENWorld
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/273397-paizo-re-invents -hexcrawling-5.html#post5122872

Background:
I'm going to be DMing Curse of the Crimson Throne for a group of friends, and this will be our first major campaign in Golarion. In order to create an introduction to the world of Golarion, and to the campaign, I started to toy around with the idea of creating a slide deck (PowerPoint, or similar).

What I've done, basically, is to use text from Pathfinder books, images that I've extracted from my PDFs, and put them together in order to both tell the story and visualize the story. It's not 100% finished, but even in it's current state I've been able to send it to my players and thus created a little excitement and anticipation before we start playing :).

For the record, the image on slide 33 is not from a Paizo product. It is from Primal Power by WotC, and was downloaded from their art gallery.

First, an overview of the slide deck.
Slides 1-21 contains the text on page 53 in the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting, but I expanded upon the Spawn of Rovagug by using the images, and a few quotes, from Clinton Boomers article in Pathfinder #24.
Slides 22-26 is the introduction to Edge of Anarchy in Pathfinder #7, pg 6.
The remaining slides contain the mysterious message that each player has received, and a presentation of the characters.

A few sample slides
Aroden founds Absalom.

Xotani the Firebringer, one of the spawn of Rovagug.

And finally, one of the PCs. With a quote by the famous Taldan poet, and Gorumian zealot, Shakespeare.

Great idea and great job! I would love to obtain a copy of it to show my players if you are sharing.

Best.

I'd love a copy of this too!

The Idea is great, if you were willing to send me a copy, I would be delighted.

Hey! I know that NPC! This is too cool Arthedain, thanks a ton for showing it around.

Are you displaying this on a computer or a TV near the game table?

Hot stuff either way!

Elorebaen, gigglestick, feytharn: I wouldn't mind sending you a copy, would be happy to share, actually, but I'll have to check up on the legal stuff first. Except for a few lines on the last few slides, all of the text is taken from Pathfinder products, and ditto with all but one of the pictures. Obviously, I don't want to anger any Experts with the Lawyer PrC :).

I guess it might fall under the Community Use License ( http://paizo.com/communityuse). I'll see what I can find out.

Wes: Hehe, yeah, I'm sure you do. If I remember correctly the NPC Guide PDF was made available for download a few days before I started making the character slides. I guess that's what you call a Gorum-send :).

I'm displaying it on a TV near the game table. I've got the players sitting in front of me, and with a 46" TV right behind me. According to them they can barely see the screen because of my ego, but I guess that's just the kind of talk us DMs have to endure after an encounter or two :).

Elorebaen, gigglestick, feytharn: I wouldn't mind sending you a copy, would be happy to share, actually, but I'll have to check up on the legal stuff first. Except for a few lines on the last few slides, all of the text is taken from Pathfinder products, and ditto with all but one of the pictures. Obviously, I don't want to anger any Experts with the Lawyer PrC :).

I guess it might fall under the Community Use License ( http://paizo.com/communityuse). I'll see what I can find out.

That's a good question. I don't actually think lawyers enter the picture here. If you display something on the interwebs or allow people at large to download it then I think Lawyers come into play but I'm not so sure that is the case if you one person gives something to another person via, say, email.

For example I'm pretty sure I could take a Barbie doll and create 'Lewd Barbie' and share that with all my friends - but if I tried to put it on the internet I'd be on shaky ground and I'm toast if I try and sell it.

In that case, sign me up for a copy too. This just sounds brilliant!

I'd love to get this too. If possible, in editable form, so I can translate it for my players.

Same here. My campaign really starts this tuesday, so it'd be great to have it. :)

After all, as long as you aren;t selling it or using it to make money for yourself, I would think this is a great ad for Paizo.

I have no intention of selling it :). Contributing to the community, and getting positive feedback, is payment enough.

The slide deck is in PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx), and approx 3 Mb in size.

If you guys can just send me an email (check my profile) and I'll send you a copy sometime later tonight.

I have no intention of selling it :). Contributing to the community, and getting positive feedback, is payment enough.

The slide deck is in PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx), and approx 3 Mb in size.

If you guys can just send me an email (check my profile) and I'll send you a copy sometime later tonight.

Sent an email, Arth. Look for something from a fletch.

Although I'm sure I don't know how I'll be able to afford shipping costs from Norway.

Sent an email, Arth. Look for something from a fletch.

Although I'm sure I don't know how I'll be able to afford shipping costs from Norway.

Hehe, no worries. We're a little less "backwater" in the virtual world, compared to the real world :).

Sent an email too. Thanks already!

That's a sweet intro, Arth. Much applause to you.

I'm surprised you didn't have a picture for you slide on the Whispering Tyrant, though. I'd always thought that was him calling out so lovingly to Valeros on the cover of the Campaign Setting.

Thanks Fletch :). As I mentioned in the original post I only used existing prose and pictures from Paizo products, so most of the credit should go to them. But I was kind of surprised at how easy it was to find appropriate artwork.

I still have a few things I want to improve upon, like adding music and automatic timing between the slides, but I'm kind of struggling with finding the right song. I kind of feel it's to easy to just use something from LOTR, or some other well-known movie.

With regards to the picture. I actually hadn't thought about that picture until now. It might be him.
For a while I considered using this picture from Gallery of Evil, but in the end it just didn't feel right (enough). I ended up leaving the slide open. Sort of using the obvious lack of artwork as an effect. "Why no picture of Tar-Baphon? Because none of the photographers survived the attempt."
In my mind a good picture of Tar-Baphon would have to be of him in his battle against the crusaders of Mendev, somehow displaying his power before his defeat.

I guess it might fall under the Community Use License ( http://paizo.com/communityuse). I'll see what I can find out.

Please do familiarize yourself with that before you distribute anything containing our IP to anyone other than your own gaming group. We appreciate your enthusiasm, but we have the rules we have for a reason.

Now, once you have something that conforms to the Community Use Policy, go nuts... you could even put it on YouTube if you like!