Arnwyn's page

I am going to play a sage sorcerer with extremely high intelligence (over 30). To better represent this extreme intellect, I intend to ask my GM to allow my character to have eidetic memory (also known as photographic memory). Since I do not have eidetic memory myself, it will fall to the GM (and other players, I suppose) to help remind me out of game of any important details that I might forget, but that my character wouldn't.

Does such a request strike you as cheating, unfair, cheesy, or in some manner unpalatable to your personal senses? I wonder if I might be asking too much.

Yes, but not the eidetic memory part.

It should absolutely not fall to the already-overworked GM (or even the other players) to take the time and effort to remind you of stuff. They can certainly do so at their leisure and convenience, but you'd get no right to complain if they miss something, and go back for a ret-con or re-do.

It should be your responsibility to actually take the effort to WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN. Tough on you? Yeah. Too bad - you're the one wanting the photographic memory.

My favorites:
- Record of Lodoss War (both original OAVs and TV)
- Bubblegum Crisis, Crash, AD Police (mostly the originals)
- Tenchi Muyo (TV only)
- El Hazard
- Patlabor (mostly the 2 movies)
- Evangelion
- Armitage III (both movies)
- Escaflowne
- Cowboy Bebop
- Ghost in the Shell (both movies and TV, but especially TV)
- Robotech/Macross, Macross Plus, Macross 7, Macross Zero, Macross Frontier
- R.O.D. (especially TV)
- anything Miyazaki/Ghibli (but mostly Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away)
- Noir
- Gasaraki
- Last Exile
- Samurai Champloo
- Darker Than Black

I'm also curious for those who believe that rail roads in tabletop gaming are boring or bad, what is your opinion of adventure paths, which are basically railroad-incarnate (save, arguably, Kingmaker)?

Adventure Paths (or any adventure module, really) are not railroads. They are published detailed interlinked events and scenarios that may or may not occur depending on the players' choices.

As ciretose says, hopefully the AP is presented in such a manner that the players are invested enough that they care about these events and scenarios, and make decisions that will lead to the next event that would logically occur based on the "most likely" actions of the PCs and NPCs involved (which is what an AP is).

But the players don't have to.

Therefore, not a railroad.

(Some people are grossly misrepresenting what a "railroad" is. A railroad is an event or sequence of events that will occur regardless of the decisions the players make. While one can make an AP a railroad, a GM doing his/her job means that an AP isn't one - he/she will have logical events occur based on the PCs' actions. That may require additional work from the GM... nothing new there and welcome to GMing.)

I think the reviews were a bit harsh. The module has its issues, I agree, but they're not devastating.

???? And the reviews weren't "devastating", either.

In fact, the reviews were more than fair.

Just saw it. It was all right, I suppose.

Lots of problems for me, though:
- WAY too much Black Widow. She's a minor nobody in the Marvel universe, as far as I can tell, and there was just way too freakin' much of her. Stop already. (She dragged down Iron Man 2, as well.)

- WAY too much time fighting each other as opposed to getting on with the bloody story. Boring.

- WAY too much time... fixing a ship. Boring. (Yeah, I get that's the time the team supposedly "comes together as a team"... still boring.)

- Speaking fixing a ship - one arrow damages a massive engine that much? Go back to engineering school, bozos.

- Hawkeye was... wait for it... also boring. Shuffle him off screen so we can watch the real heroes, thanks.

- Agent Colson's fate. Suck.

Best parts? The dialogue. Holy cow, the dialogue was good. Captain America stole the show, AFAIC. "I get that reference!"

A few of the encounters have some creatures that have templates, but there are no stat blocks.

Really? That's... annoying.

Thanks for the stats!

Not one person has made a "Mr. Ded" joke.

:(

.

.
A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk to a horse of course
That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous... wait, he's dead. :(

I meant he can't see those multiple variables and how the OP can be right but not wronged at the same time, instead of one side having to be wrong.

Ah! Now I'm following!

I was answering the question 'Am I wrong?' with a 'no'.

I never said the OP was wronged.

But... but...

*head explodes*

I never said the OP was wronged.

I am curious what you were trying to say...

I, for one, will say that yeah - of course the OP was wronged. As much as I hate blaming already overworked GMs for dumb player mistakes, the GM was clearly a jackass in this situation.

If the cleric was in first, then it behooves the GM to understand what adding something new into the party might do to the current party dynamics. This particular jackass GM doesn't even do that, but when the cleric character tries to get information from the GM as to how to proceed in the given no-win situation, the GM gives nothing (not in game - the deity is "silent" - and not even clearly out of game "the horse is cool". Uh huh. And?).

Douchebaggery all around by the GM and the ranger's player.

Best show on (network) TV right now. (Game of Thrones might be the best show on TV in general.)

I imagine at some point (if not already) it will suffer from "lore bloat"; players, DMs, or whole groups will feel intimidated by the amount of information on the setting and pass.

There's no criticism here - there is a spectrum of players. Some don't want any pregen worlds, some want a nice middle ground with simple history, and others like lots of detail. The more details published, the closer Golarion gets to serving the latter group exclusively.

I believe that Paizo will indeed cling to Golarion into the foreseeable future, and I also agree that the above is the most likely probability.

(I'm definitely okay with Paizo clinging to Golarion [as they have properly designed that world to handle a wide variety of adventures], as long as they realize that people may increasingly wish to use their APs outside of Golarion. So that means more CotCT and less JR or SD as time goes on.)

Does anyone from FGG know if it's too late to order and add one additional book to throw in the Slumbering Tsar shipping box?

Asian guy = AWESOME

It does matter, and that spreadsheet was perfectly awesome.

Which is kind of surprising, considering how many competent Paizo/3PP adventure writers have a stint at WotC on their resumes. So on a complete tangent: besides RHoD, what are the good WotC adventures?

These were pretty good:

- Sunless Citadel
- Forge of Fury
- Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
- City of the Spider Queen
- RHoD
- Expedition to the Demonweb Pits (though the format cripples it)

Reviewed. Also, spoiler-free if that matters for you.

Excellent review, Erik. And true.

This is yet another example of where Golarion got in the way of an otherwise good adventure.

I just hope it's pre-Spellplague Realms. I have no use for the book otherwise.

Exactly so. Hopefully it's pre-Spellplague, or /ignore/.

Keeping my eye on it!

Let's say there is a hostage tied up, taking X rounds of actions to free. At the same time, the party is engaging a monster of level Y. Previous editions were flexible enough to allow for a party member to disengage and rescue the hostage, or avoid using AoE spells to not injure the innocent. 4th Edition (and 3.5) will punish you more than any edition for doing so, because it assumes you will do a certain amount of average damage per round, and are always using your best class features.

I don't think any of this is true.

Then you weren't paying attention.

*rolleyes* That's a load of nonsense.

it seems to have worked for most people. And that's really always going to be my target audience.

/snark

There is no question that the 3.x Stronghold Builder's Guide is the best resource for trying to do what people want in this thread.

My group and I use that book heavily to this day (and I bought it on release day).

Publishers have a massive problem with perception of value. When you can't hold it in your hands and easily pass it along to a friend, $10-plus just feels too expensive to many people.

It's not really a "problem". Perception of value is value, pretty much by definition. (If businesses can't/won't provide value to customers, then THEY'RE DOING IT WRONG.)

If it "feels" too expensive to many people, then it is too expensive. As Brian E. Harris says above, it is unlikely people will "pay the same price, or close to the same price for something that is intangible and (one has) less rights to use it than (they) do with the "real" version."

ST:TNG, for all the reasons listed already.

Relatively safe, clean, healthy. Replicators and holosuites.

Hell, ST:TNG for the medical technology alone.

It has been proven that 4E has fans.

No one said 4e didn't have fans. Even Gorbacz didn't. Of course 4e has fans.

Yet when people prove your statement is wrong

People have done no such thing.

(They've just thrown out this "50,000" number. Is that a lot for an RPG? Who knows. But it's not proving anything.)

Yeah, I'm going with the "Y U MAD?" internet meme, here. People don't like being told that there comparatively aren't a lot of fans of their game of choice? Meh.

Without these extensions, we would have a sadly diluted Superman body of work

Untrue, and undefendable.

Paid first thing this morning, and added on the aforementioned 2 books and emailed Bill for the combo shipping.

I kind of regret, now, not adding on Black Monastery...

So it says I can combine the package with another book. Like what for example? Any suggestions or clues ? How are other people dealing with this?

According to the email, you buy the additional books you want "normally" (i.e. through their website), but when checking out do NOT select any shipping (leave all the shipping choices blank). Then send an email to Bill with the subject as per the email ("Tsar Combined Shipping") letting him know what you ordered and to combine it with your Tsar shipment.

Please, anyone from FGG correct me if I'm wrong!

If you ordered 1--I'll give instructions on how to let me know to combine shipping if you want extra books in the email w/ out paying for shipping twice.

Fantastic. It'll be highly likely that I'll be doing that. (Eamonvale and Demonheart, here I come!)

That was both terribly sad and positively uplifting at the same time.

That's my big complaint with Anime. My wife and I are heavy into it, but my running joke at nearly every new series we check out is, "Holy crap! The world needs saving! Quick, call a fourteen-year-old!"

The genre is so youth-obsessed

That's not just the genre - that's Japanese culture as a whole.

Will probably wait a while after release for a price drop.

BioWare is pretty hit and miss these days.

Dotted.

Actually, applying the Great Wheel / Hourglass Greyhawk cosmology to all of the campaign settings was a 2eRevised Planescape retcon. Before that, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance were written assuming distinct and separate cosmologies. (FR even had instances of different cosmologies for different areas on the world map.)

Is this true? Ed Greenwood always seemed fond of 1e's Manual of the Planes, and even referenced such in the earliest FR writings...

Hmmm. Never liked anything Heinsoo's done, so probably a "meh" for me.

(But the release is just vague and cryptic enough to make me curious.)

For example (one of many), We were playing a 5th level game and he had an archer character. He had a +1 bow, but not just any +1 bow. This was the ancient bow of someelvenname who was the greatest bowman of all time and his ancestor. His ancestor did all kinds of impressive thing in history. The bow had a illusion of a hippocampus breeching the front complete with seaspray and such whenever is was weilded.

Hey, that's really cool - I don't see anything wrong with...

However he would describe the anaimation (and history) in nauseating detail every. single. time. he pulled. the. thing. out. He's an archer. He pulled it out a lot. Everything he did was like this. Everything.

Oh.

Would you look into redoing the back of the cards so they are a less immersion breaking prop? The cartoon figure on the back was one of your very few jarring art choices, in my unsolicited opinion.

+1

Yeah, that was a really wonky decision...

Supposedly being released in May (2012).

Dotted.

Does Goodreader have a "Find" function (i.e. word search)?

Looks like it's $4.99 right now. :/

*Shrugs* Meh...as long as everyone's having fun who cares if the group is steamrolling the encounters. Pathfinder is all about having a bit of fun with your mates.

I think the existence of this thread shows that's probably not the case. Not sure where you're going, here.

Basically put there is no real ownership except for the maker of a product.

Indeed. I suppose the rest of us are simply more practical and practical-minded than Betts. While he certainly has an interesting opinion of where the "ethics" are in this matter, it does involve the near-entire removal of the concept of property rights, which I suspect the vast majority of the populace would (violently) reject.

Given the above, mentioning "ethics" in this thread becomes useless and meaningless. Whoops.

This is about ethics, and whether it's ethically sound to enjoy someone else's work without compensating them for it. I don't believe it is, and you do. That's what this boils down to.

Incorrectly stated. Try again.

I believe that, if you asked a random sampling of the United States population, "Is it ethical to enjoy the work of someone else without compensating them for it?" they would respond, "No," in droves. For whatever reason, we as a society have sort of glossed over that particular ethical snag when it comes to applying the first-sale doctrine to certain commodities.

Properly giving them full context (e.g. "giving up all property rights", etc), I do indeed know how the majority will respond. The "glossed over" is for a reason - people know what they are/are not getting, and what's reasonable.

That's a shame. I only consider you wrong when you're actually wrong.

Me too!

I was sort of hoping that you would do the reasonable thing. I guess that was unfounded?

Incorrectly stated. I did do the reasonable thing.

Again, you're free to look up case law. This is an unsettled legal issue, with cases supporting both sides. This shouldn't be an argument of rights, because we don't really have the ability to decide which rights we have or don't have for ourselves.

Certainly. The status quo and what we can do today is abundantly clear.

Arnwyn wrote:

Again, we are talking about physical media here.

Except when we're not.

My posts were all referring to physical media, and the first-sale doctrine.

Huh. No wonder your responses to me don't make any sense! You were diverging off to who-knows-what (probably confusing my post with others' here).

And, as I've noted, in many of those cases you run into the exact same ethical snag. I'm not saying it's okay to sell your used copy of a film on DVD to someone but it's not okay to sell your used game. I'm saying that, from an ethical standpoint, there are problems

with selling both of those things as used products.

Indeed you did. Why are libraries not unethical, then? In any case, since first-sale doctrine and property rights are enshrined in law and widely accepted by the vast vast majority of people, you are in such a tiny minority on that one, your random protests on an internet messageboard still don't mean much. (If a tiny minority believes something is unethical and the majority disagrees, then it's not unethical - "conforming to the standards of behavior" [except in possibly extreme circumstances, which we're not discussing here]. It's also subjective, so again, the minority are usually incorrect.)

I suspect after this paragraph you'll want to go into a debate about "ethics" and "ethical behavior", but that's probably a little too far from this particular topic, so I won't bite. (And we'll save each other a lot of time because it will quickly come to an impasse, since I consider you wrong 99% of the time, Betts. We won't be agreeing.)

Do I really need to defend the idea that we, societally, consider public lending libraries a public good?

*shrug* You brought it up and said it didn't apply, so yeah - you do. Explanation. In detail. (No, you don't need to. See above.)

Arnwyn wrote:

My previous post/statement continues to hold true: "Purchasing used products (of any sort) is certainly legitimate - and consumers do have the right to sell their property, and have the right of first sale." It really is the end of story.

I'm afraid it isn't.

Yes, in the context of physical media for consoles, it is. My statement is correct and accurate.

I know that.

Excellent! Then I'm glad we can get whatever your weird and irrelevant peccadilloes are out of the way.

Except for the important differences between the sale of used digital media and the examples you gave. One of them is a public good recognized by the state and provided free of charge for the sake of that good, and the other is a used product that, just like pretty much every non-digital product out there, will eventually break beyond repair. If you buy a used car, you are not getting the same experience as someone who drives a new car is, to varying degrees depending upon the condition of the used vehicle - you are spending more in repairs, and can enjoy the car for less time before it fails. If you play a used copy of Bioshock, you are enjoying the exact same experience (aside from the individual choices you make during the course of gameplay) that everyone who purchased the game new is, but you're getting that experience at a (typically) huge discount.

Oh? I think we're all aware of the degradation of physical media (just like cars). The examples can also be expanded to used CD, DVD, BD, and book sales as well, not just used cars.

Again, we are talking about physical media here. Just as cars can eventually break down (we're also all aware of cars lasting many decades), so can physical media. And, while the experience of using a used vehicle depends (that's quite the "depends" you make) on the quality of the vehicle, so does the experience of a used game depend on the quality of the physical media (scratches, etc). And, again, don't overly concentrate on used vehicles. Expand it to used books, CDs, houses, etc. Anything physical object that can be purchased and then re-sold. It's all applicable.

You might also want to go into more detail about "the public good" before chirping that there are these nebulous "differences".

My previous post/statement continues to hold true: "Purchasing used products (of any sort) is certainly legitimate - and consumers do have the right to sell their property, and have the right of first sale." It really is the end of story.

As explained above, that's a pretty ignorant argument to make.

Not very well, I see. I'd be careful of throwing around the word "ignorant".

I preordered through FGG a year back or so and it's great to see the final culmination of the series, the HC, almost here. Very excited.

And HOLY CRAP - SWORD OF AIR is possibly coming? Wooo!

"Yes, and because bad things never happen to me, they never can possibly happen to anyone else, ever (plus who cares if they do as long as I am having fun?)." I love video gamer logic.

Actually, that's not necessarily "video gamer logic". It's just a&@##!~ logic.

I frankly don't understand the fuss. I own a 360, a Wii, and a gaming PC, and I don't think I've ever played a pre-owned game on any of them. If I want a game, I'll buy it from the people who actually made it, and make sure that my money supports the development of additional games along the same vein.

Why would anyone care about this? Other than the obvious, "I don't want to pay full price for the games I play," argument, which frankly doesn't have a whole lot of ethical weight behind it?

It's not really relevant whether you, personally, purchase or don't purchase used games. Enough people do - and have the right to do so - that your particular habits are meaningless. Keep that in mind.

Purchasing used products (of any sort) is certainly legitimate - and consumers do have the right to sell their property, and have the right of first sale. The above complaint is nothing more than a complaint against libraries and used car sales, as well. Pretty dumb.

If you "don't understand the fuss" and wonder "why anyone would care about this", then you simply aren't thinking hard enough. Whoops on your part.

(Generally, it is a wise idea to purchase a game in such a manner as to give the original creator as much money as possible in order for the creator to continue to make games that you are likely to enjoy, but that breaks down a bit if the creators are inconsistent, or only rarely come out with something enjoyable. At that point, consumers can/should exercise their rights and make whatever purchasing decision they see fit for themselves.)

I've read the rumors, and while concerned, I don't believe them at this time.

...and the initial plan was to do a classic/normal AP afterwards. They ultimately scratched it because no one at the office could get excited about it, though not because of the dragon. It was just too bland.

Which is really weird, because then we get Shattered Star, including 6 disconnected dungeons. How bland is that?

2. Id like to see an 'Agents of the Realms' adventure..kind of like James Bond meets Golarion. Characters are 'agents for Taldor. (or Absalom..or Andor...) and are sent on spy missions that gradually unravel the plans and threats of a secret bad guy consortium...

That'd be pretty cool.

3. Id like to see an Exploration of a a lost city adventure path.

They did this already (SS). Yes, it weirdly diverged and yes, it was a relative failure, but I can't imagine them trying this anytime soon (i.e. within many of our gaming lives...).

5. A Module centered around the group being hired to escort a woman

Did this, too (JR). (Not the same as the rest of the suggestion, but another "escort mission" probably isn't in the cards.)