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Well done, one and all! There's just one problem, though. Ruvaid Virk's name is not in bold.
he gently whispers his name to you
Everything in italics is an excerpt. I believe this was all written by Jessica. The only way for the marketing team to know who wrote an excerpt is to ask the development team—and to be honest we’re trying to create these blogs without interrupting the development team, so that they can continue to be productive. However, we are already asking for their approval on these blogs, so it might not be that much of an interruption. Thanks for the feedback!We mean to attribute the artists. Fixing that. :) Thanks, Aaron! Yes, most of the text used here is my work. The only piece of the excerpt text I didn't write is the paragraph that appears immediately before the fictional author's biography, setting up the reader for what they'll find in the rest of the book. I'm glad people are excited for the book, I'm very proud of my contributions to Rage of Elements, including particularly some of the text used for this blog. I think often it's easy for fans of planar content to get wrapped up in the content as it appears on those other planes, and lose sight of the way in which the material plane (or, the universe, now!) is the most planar of all, since it's a combination of all of them. I really loved writing the line about searching your own heart and discovering truths about yourself as you explore, and the universal empathy mortals possess as creatures created from and with a capacity to embody all aspects of the multiverse. Unfortunately, it's too long for a tweet, or the blog would have been my permission to immediately quote the text myself.
I think this comes across in the previews, but in my mind, Rage of Elements has more in common with one of Planescape's plane-focused boxed sets like Planes of Law than it does with the actual Planescape Inner Planes book we got. It's not hard to picture each of the element's chapters as its own little booklet, and they all stand alone in that way imo. I think it's really incredible and am so happy and grateful I got to participate in creating it. A book like this, focusing on the elements, elementals, and the elemental planes, was absolutely one of my top dream projects. So often, elementals and the elemental planes get kinda overshadowed by the outer planes and their outsider groups, so the elementals are often just not given the space on the page to really exist and be cool. Rage of Elements gives them that space, and I hope when you see the book you'll agree how awesome the final result is.
Wow what a cool list of cool authors
I have a question for the designers, Who designed the Darvakka(Nightshades) and how/where did you come up with the new Names for them? Both the Name Darvakka and the individual names. I wrote the section but the names were very much a collaboration, so I can't speak to the inspiration points that others brought to the process, only to the parts of the names I contributed. When I name things, my typical process is to do portmanteaus (such as with cephalume) or to root around in old forms of words and just noodle around with sounds and letters. My contributions to the vanyver name came from the old norse vængr which meant "wing" - because this is a winged bat creature! The va- and -r ending stuck around from that inspiration point, but the middle was iterated on until it felt right for the creature. For the sykever, this one ended up pretty far afield from where I started. Sometimes I'll jot a starting name down and then just kind of change it, one letter at a time, over the course of days or weeks until I'm happy enough not to make any more changes. This name started with válcaeir, which means "walker." With the way this name developed over time, you can start to see a preference forming in the names for certain sounds and letters, though. Urveth and Nasurgeth... I don't know what to tell you, they just *feel* right. They didn't have inspiration words so much as they worked off the conventions established with the first two, and they just kind of vibe in my brain in the right way. Urveth just conjures the "gaping toothy abyss" vibe for me when I hear it, and Nasurgeth sounds nasty and gross and goopy.
I always thought the Drift was an underused concept. I want there to be floating chunks of other planes - bits of Heaven and Hell, abyssal dreadnoughts, devil-whales, chaos smurfs, a bit of everything in there. Society travel tends to be very quiet; I want the travel to be the adventure. I hope this moves in that direction. If you look at the Drift Encounters table in the appendix of Galaxy Exploration Manual, this is a lot of what you'll find.
High five for Jessica C! I like how both Drift Crashers 1 and Drift Hackers 1 are written by a Jessica :) You can't kick off a Drift Crisis AP without us.
Yayayayayay
Wait a sec so is name of starship Marata or Primorata? Weird typo if name of the ship doesn't change between two adventures :D :)
Mike, I was not expecting to get a shout out in this post! Thank you! Having any (or especially all) of your sections cut like this can sometimes be a nightmare for us freelancers, so many of us suffer with imposter syndrome. Cut sections often make us wonder and worry about what we did wrong, no matter how much we know publishing is chaotic and sometimes things just happen that are totally outside of our knowledge or control. Everyone, I have maybe never felt more reassured about my work than with my cut sections on Guns and Gears. Michael Sayre told me in advance as soon as he knew my sections were being cut. He made sure I wasn't blindsided by an author list withoun my name, or by a book without my work. He took the time and the care to make sure I knew what was going on. He also made sure I knew that he liked my sections, and that he was searching for new homes for them. Even though my name isn't in this book and my work isn't in these pages, I still enjoyed every step of working with Mike and all the other writers on this book. Thank you for looking out for me again, Mike, and mentioning my involvement. For those just watching from home, bc of my NDA, it's only bc Mike included my name and involvement here that I have the opportunity to say any of this publicly.
Apologies, didn't mean to fight bad info with bad info! All good, misinfo was big on that one. Really wish media outlets had made some kind of effort to contact us instead of just making this assumption and publishing with it, but them's the breaks. I tried to address the misunderstanding on the boards last week on the 15th here, in the United Paizo Workers thread.
I'm fully unversed on the subject of unions, 95% genuine question, 5% snark: is it normal in these circumstances to specifically use the phrase "voluntarily recognize?" I'm seeing the word "voluntary" stressed a lot, and it comes of as... not suspicious, just kind of peculiar. Is there an involuntary way to recognize a union? There's some info about what voluntary recognition would mean here: https://unitedpaizoworkers.org/2021/10/15/day-2-steel-your-resolve/
As mentioned elsewhere that was a demand of the freelancers, not the union nor Paizo, and has been dropped.That's great news (for us). I might be able to get them back on board with that. That's also not what our demand was. I don't know who among the freelancers those news articles talked to, but they misunderstood whomever or wherever they got that information from. Sorry your friends got duped by the fake news, buddy. That's rough.
Thank you!
So... practically speaking, it would save money and labor in the long run by having a specialist handle these duties while simultaneously lowering burnout rates? Seems like an overall win to me. Yeah, it's work that needs to be done, and work that's already being done, but it's not formally anyone's actual duty, which is frustrating and exploitative. What ultimately ends up happening is the staff who care the most passionately about preventing issues like Edgewatch step up and take the work of preventing (or cleaning up after) problems onto their own shoulders and trying to juggle it ontop of their actual jobs, without the support and time needed, and without the benefit of being treated like they're doing their job when they do it. They fight an uphill battle to get their words taken seriously, because they're just an editor, or just a developer, and not someone whose duties involve being concerned about this.
Hi, everyone! There seems to be some confusion about the freelancer call for a diversity consultant, and what that means. As a freelancer, I would like to tell you what we were actually asking for. Paizo hires sensitivity readers, as they should, to look at some of their material. As we continue into the future, the quantity of Paizo content that gets this kind of attention will increase. There is work that needs to be done. You don't notice the absence of it because it's already being done by staff with a whole other full time jobs worth of duties. Currently, it's up to developers and editors to coordinate with sensitivity readers and raise concerns about content, ontop of their existing jobs. In addition to coordinating with sensitivity readers, editorial worked their butts off trying to warn about Edgewatch, and then trying to clean up Edgewatch after their warnings went unheeded. Other projects have needed similar attention. Good people keep burning out and leaving because they care about making sure this work gets done, but they can't keep up with doing a whole additional unpaid job ontop of their actual one. This is a full position worth of work, and it's being piled ontop of existing staff and contributing to the perpetual crunch on dev, design, and edit's shoulders, when it could be made into a formalized position within the editorial department, and become one person's clear job to handle.
On the matter of raising wages, from what Mark Seifter has said, that might not be very financially viable for Paizo right now. Another option that was raised was moving Paizo's HQ to a more inexpensive area, which sounds great if they can make that work. Same with raising prices on their books (although I'm worried that could easily have an opposite effect). Paizo employees have friends, families, partners with their own careers, and a myriad other concerns that make packing up and moving the whole operation and everyone inolved to a different state not only a challenge, but also a horrible thing to ask of employees. What would be better is allowing remote work. Currently, some employees can work remotely, while others are forced to relocate. The pandemic has proven to us that these people all CAN remote work; the designers, editors, and other staff all have been, and the work is all getting done. The books are coming out. If all staff were afforded the same opportunity to choose remote work, they could choose for themselves if they wish to live in WA, or somewhere else where their paycheque stretches further. It also removes the burden of moving costs on new hires and makes the job postings more accessible to minority developers, and eliminates hours of commute time for staff who live in WA but can't afford housing in Redmond close to the office.
Hello all, I have been summoned by Dice Will Roll's truename magic invoking me in the first post. I'm Jessica Redekop, as noted in the OP I play Xiadani on the Valiant actual play podcast. I'm also a Paizo freelancer -- I contributed to Bestiary 2 and 3, to the APG and GMG, to Ancestry Guide, and many others. I wrote PFS 2-16 Freedom for Wishes, which released earlier this year. This past weekend during Paizo's GenCon panels, my new AP was announced, too. I wrote the first volume of the Drift Crashers Starfinder AP. I've made some social media posts about this issue, which is why and how my name ended up in the OP - I haven't been quiet about my support for the creative people at Paizo I work with as a freelancer. I love and support them all, and stand behind them in solidarity. I am also calling for accountability. I believe with my whole heart that this is important.
“Spoken on the Song Wind” is a Pathfinder adventure for four 4th-level characters by Quinn Murphy.That suggests that there is a typo on or the other of these. Most likely not a typo, most likely you actively play your PCs at levels 1 to 3 in the first volume, reaching 4th level at the very end without any time spent playing at level 4. The second book then picks up where the first left off, beginning with the PCs at 4th level. Note that I'm just speculating based on how I interpreted the information, I don't have any special informaiton about the levels of these adventures, just the same product descriptions we're all reading.
Ya gotta wonder what else can go wrong that hasn't already? Player characters are perpetual chaos machines.
Reading the Geniekin entry has me slightly excited for the future of the Heritage. It mentions that the five options presented are just some of the most common kinds of Geniekin in Golarion. This gives me hope for the potential to see other kinds down the line, which represent some of the alternate elements present within the multiverse; such as Aether, Void, Metal (arguably an aspect of Earth), Wind (arguably just Air), Wood, and Spirit. Disclaimer in the interest of hopefully not being misunderstood: I have no special knowledge about this and am posting my personal opinion as a fan of geniekin, the elemental planes, and the unofficial planescape-adjacent para-geansi and quasi-genasi for no reason other than my desire to discuss possible new geniekin with other fans of them. I am a big fan of the heritage/lineage framework of PF2 and think these elements fit within this framework as lineages for the five existing geniekin heritages. If I were creating them as geniekin lineages, I would create them as follows: Aether and Spirit: Lineages for Suli
I would not create a wind lineage for sylph as I believe it aligns with the base sylph. I would potentially not create a metal lineage either for the same reason. I agree that Void would be a good lineage to pick up on the negati/negative element geniekin. I would also note that the negative quasi-elemental plane of air was vacuum, which is my reasoning for choosing sylph instead of suli for a void lineage.
You can't compare "Geniekin" to "Tiefling," they are different scopes of classification. "Geniekin" means "inner sphere planetouched," which generally frees up "planetouched" refers to specifically the outer sphere planetouched. Ifrit (Fire), Oread (Earth), Suli (Neutral/All), Sylph (Air), and Undine (Water) correspond categorically with Aasimar (good), Aphorite (lawful), Duskwalker (neutral), Ganzi (chaotic), and Tiefling (evil). There are 5 for the inner sphere and 5 for the outer sphere. An aasimar can take a lineage feat if they want character options that specifically relate to the type of aasimar they are, and an ifrit can do the same.
This thread, theres a person with a contributor tag hinting about lineages for the geniekin being for different elemental creatures (like primal dragons!) And someone somewhere mentioned each geniekin is a seperate heritage. I think that was Luis.and the bits and pieces teased about Geniekin and their lineages have me really excited as well.2) do you know where to find said bits and pieces teasing the geniekin? Oops! Do you mean me? Let me super big clarify and disclaim: I did not intend to hint at the book's content with anything I've posted in this thread. I just love geniekin and love to talk about them :) There are so many flavourful ways geniekin characters can be created, and several compelling ways lineages for geniekin can be implemented into the game. However exactly they're implemented, and whether it's in this book or in later books adding more geniekin content, I'm sure they will be extremely cool.
I think people very much do want more shoony content. Maybe you can throw some feats into the Absalom book, although its probably too late for that as well. Excepting the delays to expand the NPC gallery/etc, Absalom was written just shy of a year before Ancestry Guide, yeah - just look at the dates their respective product pages were posted. Wishes for additional content in either books are ultimately just wishes for additional delays.
This is only tangentially related, but why are demon blooded tieflings called Pitborn? Hell is often referred to as The Pit, but I haven’t heard the Abyss being referred to as the Pit. Abyss and pit are both words for holes in the ground.
My personal interpretation is that whenever you get something that fits into 2 or more categories (celestial AND elemental, dragon AND elemental, shadow AND fiend, chaotic AND good), you can have the same origin for multiple types of creatures. Aasimar are descended from Good outsiders; Ganzi are descended from Chaotic outsiders. Azata are Chaotic Good outsiders, ergo mortals descended from them could be aasimar, ganzi, or some combination of the two, depending. Likewise for the primal dragons. Because they are both dragons and creatures with elemental subtypes native to the inner sphere, they can be used as origins for characters with dragon features, and/or for characters with elemental features. This can also apply, if you want to go there, to fey with elemental themes. Oreads often get cast as stony chunks of living mountains, but I think a dryad-descended oread with tree-like features would be really compelling.
Genasi is a made up word, for sure, but the connection between *Gen*asi and *Gen*ie is still pretty plain and it's reasonable to expect that wasn't an accident. Geniekin resembles Genasi, a term it replaced, because they both resemble Genie.
Yeah I would prefer a new name for them, or Elemental Scions, since Geniekin is accurate as calling all Tieflings Devilspawn or Aasimar’s Azatakin. Yeah, it's not an accurate name, though it's on par with the accuracy of the Genasi name in D&D. I think the best approach is probably to consider Elemental Scion an accurate term for OOC purposes, but we can reasonably believe Geniekin is used IC by most people, since the names people use in practice often aren't accurate. Most Geniekin are descended from genies, so it makes sense for the general population to think that's how they should be named. Scholars likely stick their nose up and correct people with Elemental Scion, the same way they'd correct people with the proper names of outsiders (Velstrac instead of Kyton or Chain Devil, for instance) or the like.
Now I'm wondering about Lineages for Geniekin That right there is a high quality thing to wonder about.
So why did "Outsider" need to go away? I can't speak to why it needed to go away, that kind of stuff is above my pay grade :p; but I can point out some of what's going on with 2nd edition in its place. Outsider was a creature type, with angel, demon, devil, etc as subtypes. The words fiend and celestial appeared in the names of the Half-Fiend and Half-Celestial templates, and fiend and celestial categories of creatures were referred to when describing aasimar and tiefling, but they were not game terms in 1e. Pathfinder 2e replaces types and subtypes with traits. Outsider is not a trait, but fiend, celestial, and monitor *are.* Demons have replaced their "outsider (demon)" type and subtype with the trait combo of "fiend" and "demon." You can safely conclude there won't be a trait coming in to replace Outsider (Native), and all former Outsider (Natives) will receive different traits in 2e, based on... 1) The Rakshasa and the Janni. In the P1 Bestiary, both were Outsider (Native). In the P2 bestiary, Janni has the "Elemental" and "Genie" traits, and Rakshasa have "Fiend" and "Rakshasa." 2) The way spells refer to the "humanoid" trait, as it's different from the way "humanoid" was used in 1e. The spell heroism targets "1 humanoid creature," for instance, whereas the spell charm simply targets "1 creature." This is very different from the way 1e handled charm person, enlarge person, etc, not working on non-humanoids. The humanoid vs nonhumanoid distinction does not exist at all in the same way that it used to, so there's no need to make e.g. planar scions something other than humanoids in order to have them interact the way they used to with spells.
Also interesting observation: Book states that currently three out of four good elemental lords ARE still captured, book just provides lore and cleric info for them anyway despite stating that currently worshipping them is impossible :O Wondering if they are considering doing more "free the elemental lord" content in general or just leaving that for home games If your players want to worship an Elemental Lord, you can always make that work in your game. Maybe they find a magical item with a connection to that Elemental Lord that allows the Lord to grant them powers as a cleric. Maybe you want to free them in your game, or start a game where they are already freed. There are lots of story possibilities here, and including the information for all 8 in the back sets you up with the tools to tell those stories. :)
I hope we'll get to see more illustrations of the Elemental Lords in the future, too! Regarding this book, there's unfortunately not space for all of them; they have 2 pages of the book to the eight of them.
- Are the elemental lords in the index? The eight of them? If you like the Elemental Lords, I have some good news for you :) Not only are the domains, anathemas, etc for the eight Lords included in the appendix at the back of the book, but there's also a 2-page spread dedicated to them.
Apropos one of the authors mentioned -- if you ever get a chance to play a game at a convention with Jessica Redekop, take it. I played a couple of Pathfinder games set in the Planescape setting at PaizoCon a few years ago with her, and she's one of the best GMs I've ever played with. :) <3 I should be back at PaizoCon 2020 with some Pathfinder 2 conversions of my Planescape con games, plus a new something something set in the City of 7 Seraphs!
I would also like to know about the Cephalume, are they an aqautic species?** spoiler omitted ** They are native to a liquid environment, but not specifically water, so they aren't conventionally aquatic in the sense that aquatic implies *water.* This distinction of Liquid vs Water is ultimately the reason I went with No Breath on the creature, as opposed to Water Breathing. Answering the spirit of your question, though, yes, they are accustomed to using their swim speeds to navigate their native liquid environment. PS Hello I'm Jess I wrote the Cephalume and the Spectra :>
Kate, it's always a pleasure to see you! Hoping to make it out to Big Bad Con this year, but I'll for sure be at SkalCon if you want to head over that way, too.
Already covered my Thursday pre-con manicure, so now that I'm finished with the con itself and have a minute to be at the computer, here's how the rest of it went to the best of my recollection. So sorry to anyone I saw and forget to mention, a lot was going on! Friday I show up about 10 to pick up my badge. Kate Baker is fighting clowns in a Starfinder delve with Cosmo and I linger for a bit and watch. Say hi to L. Pellazar, John Compton, and Isabelle Lee, then speed off to GM Ouroboros Killer, the first of my three games for the con. After my game, I play in the Starfinder Actual Play game GMed by Thurston, along with Compton, Kate, and Diego. As mentioned upthread by Kate, it was an excellent time and very funny. Kate and I then meet up with Isabelle, HMM, Jacob (motteditor), David N. Ross and others at the bar to hang out. Later, Kate and I play Dread with Dennis, Jason Keeley, Rob (does Rob have a forum name I should be using instead?), and Tyler from Cosmic Crit Podcast. On Saturday, I slept in then GMed Celestian's Compass. Before the banquet, I met up with David again, had a chance to chat with Tim Nightengale, Russ Taylor (Russ had some birthday brownies courtesy of his wife and they were great, thanks Jennifer!), and Stephen Radley-MacFarland before getting into the banquet line with Rob and Vanessa Hoskins. At the banquet, Vanessa and I sat at Lyz Liddell and Landon's table, along with Kate, Dennis, and Patchen Mortimer. Kate, Vanessa, Patchen and I all exchange meaningful glances as products we contributed to are announced. After the banquet, BB Wolfe and I participate in the trivia contest as Sarenrae After Dark, along with Landon, Mark Seifter (technically our record-keeper and not team member, as staffers can't join teams), and two other great people whose names I didn't catch. Sarenrae After Dark submits many excellent, extremely false answers, but we flew too close to the sun and are awarded 1 point by Lyz in the last round. Boo! BB and I see a cat in the banquet hall, pet the cat, take pictures of and with the cat, and then I call it a night. Sunday morning I sit down to do a delve with Sam Phelan, but I do a bad job of keeping track of time and have to bail about 3/4s through to go speak on the Freelance Forge panel. I then GMed my last game of the weekend, Sects Abject, get Taco Bell real quick, then play board games all night with way too many people to list. I attempted to go home, but when I swung into the bar to get a quick goodnight in to L Pellazar and others, I spot Greg Vaughan, Jacob, and Painlord, who tells me he enjoyed my post in this thread about my nails and insists I should post again. I give Greg my annual update on the availability of City of Seven Seraphs (he needs to buy it, it's very important), confirm for Painlord that I know Scott Young (his Scott Young), and we talk about cats. I give my truly awful business cards out to a few people and call it a night. On Monday I shamble back in, hang out with Thursty and BB for a bit, then go to play in Greg Vaughan's finale of The Riverboat Game ft. Steampower with Kate, Dennis, Steve Helt, Al Riggs, Jason Nelson, Rachel Ventura, and others. Painlord drifts in and plays Merisiel after Kate and Dennis have left for the airport. My plan for this game was to play Lem (the halfling bard iconic) but insist I was actually Gimble (3rd edition's gnome bard 'iconic'), but Greg doesn't have a copy of Lem. Instead, I play Meligaster (the halfling mesmerist iconic) and insist I am Gimble and therefore also a gnome and a bard. I also insist I am the station manager's son. I succeed on this bluff check. To be clear, the station manager was a human. All in all a good con.
Don't worry too much about knowing the fine details of specific feats, etc. As long as you're familiar with the system as a whole, the character sheets contain all the info for your character's feats and class-specific abilities. Maeve's sheet, for example: https://i.imgur.com/XfmRusc.png
BTW, the classes for the full list are... * Katina Argyr, Cleric
Dracomicron, Maeve is a rogue with the Sap Adept and Sap Master feats!
There isn't a lot of faction involvement in this game, as it takes place in Torch and the PCs and NPCs are generally more concerned about themselves and Torch's ongoing gang wars than they are with the Factions. The only PC with a Faction affiliation is Bedlam, who is a Xaositect.
Hello, friends! This game takes place in Sigil and the PCs are all members of the Mercykillers, agents of law and justice pursuing a dangerous serial killer. Knowledge of Planescape isn't required to play, but it will likely improve your experience with this adventure. This game has 10 premade PCs of 7th level, with a male-bodied and female-bodied option for each party role. You can preview the characters here: https://imgur.com/a/GVan6
Hello, friends! Don't be intimidated by the description of this game, that's just me having a bit of fun :) This game is great for players who aren't familiar with the Planescape setting, as it begins on a Prime World and the PCs are also visiting the planes for the first time! This game has 5 premade PCs of 6th level, and there are male-bodied and female-bodied miniatures available for all 5. You can preview the characters here: https://imgur.com/a/5DuYVWU
Hello, friends! The PaizoCon Event Schedule is live, so here's my schedule for PaizoCon 2019: Friday
Saturday
Sunday
This leaves me lots of time to GM additional games, hang out, etc! Especially Friday PM and all of Monday :o
So happy to see this out and available! I was responsible for most of what you see in the Archives district, including the drugs, the spellwyle, and Ms The Weird. :>
The archetype isn't actually explicitly tied to Wadjet as a deity; it's an archetype that would work well for a Wadjet paladin, and the art went in that direction, but Wadjet wasn't scrubbed from the name or description of the archetype that appears on PFSRD -- it actually just doesn't appear. There's nothing tying the Champion of the Cascade to serpents, specific languages, etc, because it's meant to work for any civilization that relies on water to support life (i.e. all of them).
I've noticed a trend re: one specific aspect of this adventure, so if it's alright for me to use the product comment thread to offer my thoughts on the best way to handle the investigation phase of this adventure, I'd like to say: just be transparent with the players! They know the mechanics of their combat abilities, that combat runs on initiative, etc. I don't see any reason not to just tell them how the investigation phase of this adventure will work right at the start. When I've run the Hao Jin Hierophant adventure, I say this or something similar to the players: Spoiler:
"Your Tongues spell is going to last for 100 minutes. We're going to handle this by breaking your investigation up into 20-minute phases. You can spend a phase checking out any of the buildings in the village, making a Diplomacy check to Gather Information, making a Perception check to search the village, etc, whatever you want to do. You can split up and check out multiple buildings at once, or you can stick together to aid each other on skill checks. After each phase, you can meet up again to debrief, share what you've discovered, and plan out your next course of action. You can spend a maximum of 5 phases in the village before your Tongues spell wears off and you'll need to secure an alternative method of communication." Again, I hope it's okay and not weird of me to post something like this :) Jess |
