Apolloin's page

Well, you could stick to coins or beads. I've used kid's toys once in a while. Heck, most of us have played without minis at all at some point in our gaming careers. Maybe you're young and don't remember when limited metal choices were all we had. Somehow we managed to game just fine.

I am 37 and have been gaming since I was 14. I simply never used minis outside of a wargaming environment before and due to the design specifics in Pathfinder I really feel I'd be missing out on a lot of the game (and so would my players) if I didn't play out combat visually.

There is really only one reason for random PPMs you need to know. No random. No PPMs. This product line would not exist without randomness. If you don't care and don't like it, don't buy them. Pretend they don't even exist. There are ample alternative choices available. Metal. Secondary market PPMs. Pawns. Paper minis. WOTC pogs. Heroscape. And all of the other options that all of us use when we don't have the right mini. In spite of a VERY large mini collection, I make my own paper minis from the art in PDFs all the time because it gives me the best possible mini.

Actually I'm not here for a solution. Paizo have provided their most excellent blank flipmats and I simply scrawl a representation of the battlespace on there with dry erase markers and use spare dice as minis. It's not as awesome as detailed terrain and minis, but it gives me all that gameplay I mentioned above.

All I'm here to do is to say that I now understand the business model being used, but that understanding does not, in my case, translate to acceptance or my 'buying in' to the situation. The miniatures themselves exactly meet my needs and whilst the pricepoint is slightly out of my comfort zone on a per-miniature basis the random nature twists that slight discomfort until minis would become the most expensive part of playing Pathfinder. To me this is unacceptable so I'm not buying them.

Honestly, there are a lot of us that would be happy to offer up ideas for you if you come at this in a positive manner. Which minis are you looking for? What is your budget? Do you have access to a decent printer? Do you have time or inclination to paint? I think a lot of us are just tired of the complaints that offer nothing new in the way of a solution.

Thanks, but I really don't need help - unless you can direct me to a supplier of similar quality prepainted minis that cost around the two dollar mark per figure and allow me to choose the minis that I want. I completely understand that my requirements may not be reasonable and there's certainly no illwill on my part if Paizo can't meet them - I just want to let a supplier of mine know why I'm not interested in their current offering and what would need to change for me to become interested.

Fingerpointing might assuage some ruffled feathers, but it isn't going to help our comrade here navigate the rocks and shoals ahead of him.

I think it's abundantly clear that the players did not understand that surrender to the big bad was a viable solution to this situation. I'm not sure that I would have, in their place. The involvement of Devils and Monsters is really the swaying argument here - an evil human nation might well be expected to honour the surrender of prisoners of war, but not Devils and Gnolls.

That said, hostage negotiations generally work by escalation to stages wherein both parties try to secure a desirable alternative to the death of the hostages. Only when negotiations are in jeopardy of failing completely will either side go tactical, with the hostage takers using the death of one or more hostages to try and regain control of the negotiations and the hostage rescuers trying to use the death of the hostage takers to free the hostages.

I can completely understand the PCs going tactical if they felt that negotiations had failed - what I can't understand is them going tactical nuclear. Even the Russians don't try and resolve hostage situations with artillery.

It's pretty clear that this was either a Player with a problem or a Player trying to make some sort of grand gesture. If it's the former, I'd really be telling him to modify his behaviour or else consider his position in the group. If it's the latter, then clearly there is a serious grievance between GM and Party and it's time that some sort of negotiated settlement was attempted - even if it's just an agreement to fold the campaign or, as a last resort, the group.

Other than that, the gentleman on page one called it. It didn't take more than four or so pages before some people on here were *seriously* suggesting that nuking children could be considered a morally acceptable act for Good Aligned players. Heck, we even had people suggesting that a Paladin should derive no moral quandry from it.

TL&DR?

1. Mistakes made on both sides.
2. Resolving the broken dynamic between Players and GM is more important than assigning blame ingame at this point.
3. Retcon was kinda foolish.
4. Given retcon, some case for Pally falling. No real case for other ingame consequences.

I've now read the reasons for the random distribution and commonalities and... I still don't care.

What am I supposed to do? Craft my encounters around whatever miniatures the gods of gaming decide I get when I open the boxes?

"Sorry guys, looks like it's goblins all the way down. And none of you can play elves. Lots of dwarves though. Hope none of you rolled clerics, either, because there's just a single zombie in here."