Aubrey the Malformed's page

It's fine for a PC, but it irritates me for my own personal avatar.

Please cancel my remaining subscriptions. Thanks.

I'm experiencing difficulties posting into one of my game threads (Aubrey's Rise of the Runelords gameplay thread). I type the post into the box and hit submit, but it doesn't post through to the board and instead simply reappears, with the text I wrote still in the box and unposted. Hitting submit several times doesn't work and then closing out loses the post entirely. This is a problem I've experienced before here, so I don't think it is an issue on the individual thread. I had just posted to another thread with no difficulties.

Please cancel my Pathfinder Tales, Pathfinder Player Companion and Planet Stories subscriptions. Many thanks.

The fire crackles, throwing out its flickering orange radiance. It gives up its heat grudgingly, making those around it huddle close to enjoy its warmth. Wrapped in their cloaks and blankets, they look like low rocks where they lie snoring. An inix grumbles in the darkness.

Other fires crackle nearby, with more sleepers around them. The vague shapes of animals loom and twitch in the darkness: crodlus, like featherless, snouted ostriches, hobbled and dozing; inix, giant monitor lizards, muzzled and staked down to prevent them attacking. Meanwhile, circling slowly in the freezing night, the guards.

Keeping away from the fires so their eyes can adjust to the dark, wrapped up against the cold and breath fogging, they keep watch in small bands. While the caravan sleeps, they watch for danger coming out of the desert.

Calla:

Gorad:

Jareen:

Irivis:

Arakan:

OK, start roleplaying!

OK, at the moment we have:

- Rosey (warlock)
- Aadvark (bard)
- Glod
- Nevynxxx (4e and DS virgin)
- AG (also a 4e and DS virgin)

Hi, BigNorseWolf. While the original thread has been locked, you raised some points in your reply to me I'd like to respond to. As we aren't spewing hate at one another, I'm assuming this is acceptable

[Quote=]
A: That's actually considered debatable, rather than a proven truth. However, extended deficit spending right now is probably not a great idea, as the downgrades and turmoil going on in the markets suggests.

B: It's about as proven as anything can get in the murky realms of "what if" economics and history. It PROBABLY helped the economy but there's absolutely no doubt that it helped the individuals involved by giving them enough cash to buy food for their families, job skills, some pride. It also definitely helped the nation by building up the infrastructure. So it's definitely a double win, and possibly a triple.

I think it also disproves the idea that people were out of work because they're lazy. As soon as the government put up a sign saying "work here" veritable armies of people showed up to do it.

Even if deficit spending is a good idea (and I'm not especially denying it under the circumstances we find ourselves in) there is a limit to what can be done with debt levels so high, and from where it becomes counter-productive. More below.

I didn't say all people are unemployed because they are lazy. I doubt the vast majority are. I am lazy and even I went and found myself a job. More below.

[quote=]A: You already are. They are getting restive, as comments from the official news agency indicate. There are probably limits to what they will accept.

We're too big to fail. We're not only their biggest borrower we're their biggest customer. If we're not buying more things than we need their entire system shuts down. America would have riots that would end with some minor legislative changes. China would have riots that would end in revolt. So we can play chicken with china because we're driving and SUV and they've got a smartcar. Suckers.

Hmm. So everyone is getting excited about nothing, are they? Actually, the US doesn't need to default to do itself a lot of damage. Yes, a lot of Chinese money is tied up in US Treasuries, and falls in the value of that debt would hurt them. They hold that money as foreign exchange reserves. That could come from falls in the value of the debt due to credit downgrades and from falls in the value of the dollar itself, which would probably happen in concert if some serious downgrades happened and also be self-reinforcing.

However, a fall in the value of US debt would actually not be very helpful for your spending plans. The flipside of falling values of debt is increasing interest costs. A brief example: a US Treasury, face value $1, is issued with a 5% interest rate on the face value payable to the purchaser, and will repay in full in five years. Due to credit concerns, the value in the market of that Treasury falls to $0.90. If that bond is then sold by the purchaser to someone else at $0.90, the actual interest rate is 5%x1/0.90 = 5.5%. If the government, under those market conditions, wants to sell Treasuries to new investors, the rate they would have to pay would be 5.5%, because that is the going rate in the market.

For a foreign investor (like the Chinese) the fall in value of the dollar adds an added layer of risk, which might also mean they demand a higher interest rate in the market. And there's another implication. The US is in the happy position of providing the world's reserve currency, i.e. the currency which other central banks will predominately hold their currency reserves in. Because of this, funding cost for the US government are a bit lower than they otherwise would be (this is a factor of the additional demand for dollar assets as opposed to, say, sterling). But this is a right that is earned in part by economic size but also be economic stewardship. If it looked like the US was willing to "play chicken" with the markets, it is hard to believe that reserve currency status would be maintained, also increasing funding costs.

So you can see that not paying attention to your credit rating will impact on how much it costs the government to fund itself, so in fact that would impact on how much money, after interest costs was left over for spending. Also bear in mind that corporate borrowings are also priced off US Treasuries, so companies would have less to invest. In the US (not the UK) mortgage rates are also priced off US Treasuries, so it would raise prices for the average guy in the street. Couple that with a falling dollar, and you would see rising inflation along with rising debt costs. That's not a recipe for a happy economy. And that's before you even bring the costs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security into the mix.

And then think of the political implications. A US government that doesn't stand behind its own credit rating would have a lot of trouble telling anyone else what to do, which could damage any diplomatic efforts. There would almost certainly be reduced spending of stuff like defence, which would mean that the US's role as the world's policeman would suffer. And who would you like to step into that role? China? I've nothing against the Chinese as such but at the moment they are an autocratic dictatorial oligarchy with no genuine respect for human rights. Would was want to leave the world in their grasp?

And even if China did bail out the US (assuming they could afford it, and actually their economy isn't that big even if it is growing fast) what would be the impact of that? Increased Chinese dominance on the world stage, in business (NEWSFLASH - CHINA BUYS WALMART!) and so on. China doesn't have much of a consumer culture and if the Chinese start selling to themselves, they won't even need the US as a market that much. And if the Chinese don't blink? I mean, there's lots of developed countries who would like to borrow from the Chinese at the moment. What if they decide to hold their reserves in euros or sterling?

US dominance is not a given. In fact, it is a fairly new phenomenon (from the Spanish-American War). Remember, I'm British - we had a global empire considerably less than a century ago, and are now very much a middle-ranking economy on the edge of Europe.

[Quote=]A: Also true, but I get irritated by people telling me about the horrors of unemployment when I have experienced them and they don't seem to have done.

B: It's hard to tell what the other person has or hasn't experienced. It could also be vastly different in their country or even by city.

That's also true.

[Quote=]A: Firstly, company B will offer cheaper products to the market. That benefits consumers.

B: It does.. unless one of those consumers used to make the product. You however reach a tipping point where the cheap products can't be bought because the consumers have no money. It's a matter of group vs individual benefit. In an ideal world, everyone else would make things in an expensive country in order to provide you with rich consumers for your cheap products.

A: Think about what you have in your house and where it was made. Secondly, tying up resources in an activity which can be more productively carried out elsewhere is a way of being inefficient, which actually reduces wealth for everyone. This was established by Ricardo a long time ago.

B: Equivocation: everyone is not everyone.
A group is not synonymous with an aggregate of the individuals within it. If you have a group of 10 people making 10,000 dollars each, or 5 people making 20,000 and 5 people making nothing the GROUP is the same, but the individuals are not.
If a job is exported to china the benefit and savings is dispersed among all of the consumers, saving them say 3 dollars per unit. The downside is that the cost is localized and the employees are loosing 18,000 dollars or whatever their salary was. You can't just look at things from a macro point of view: that's how we got into this mess.

You can't design policy for individuals. Plus, individuals change. Economies change. Tastes and technology change. My mother used to use a Kalamazoo counting machine, a sort of mechanical computer / calculator, in the late fifties and early sixties to do the payroll for the company she worked for. Now, that technology is clearly obsolete with the advent of computing. But what did the guys who used to make the machines think about the rise of computing think? Were they worried they would be laid off, flung on the scrap-heap with irrelevant skills? Maybe. Should they have been protected, by placing restrictions on people using computers, the purchase of computers, extra taxes for computerised payrolls to discourage the use of computers, and so on? Clearly, such a policy would have been ultimately bad for everyone, given that computing has revolutionised pretty much everything.

So maybe that's a silly, straw man example. But how do you choose which industries to protect, and which to throw to the wolves? If you are talking about government action, you are basically talking about civil servants and their political masters (yes, politicians, those corrupt bastards we were talking about before) having the say. Do you trust them to predict correctly? How would you prevent corrupt vested interests - you know, those terrible corporations (and unions) lining the pockets of the terrible corrupt politicians - manipulating such a policy to their own ends. And that's not exactly a rhetorical question - a lot of lobbying is about maintaining the status quo and the flow of subsidies to inefficient industries that need the funds to survive, at the expense of tax payers and consumers. In fact, the whole process could help corrupt the political system without adequate checks and balances.

Perhaps we should consider the exporting of a steel-worker's job from Pennsylvania to Romania instead. You don't have to predict technological trends, you are making rolled steel. But the plant in Romania makes it cheaper - lower overheads, not need to pay for expensive healthcare and benefits, probably fewer people in the process. Clearly, if the steel plant closes, that would be bad for the local community. A lot of the problems of long-term unemployment stem from people living in areas where the big employers have gone down, possessing skills which are useful in those defunct industries but not much elsewhere, and nothing much has come to replace the lost jobs. It's bad for those people and it is bad for the fabric of the society in which they live.

But...

What can you actually do about it? There is actually plenty of manufacturing going on in developed countries, but it tends to be high tech. The answer, surely, is to ensure that people are provided with the skills they need. But what about the users of that steel? Why should a car company have to pay over the odds for steel? And to whom would it pass the costs? Well, the consumer. And what about competition to the car firms from firms using cheaper, non-US steel - unless you decide to protect the car firms too. Of course, a company that doesn't have to compete doesn't have to try very hard either, of course - so you'll probably get an expensive, s*$& car made with s&@+ steel that actually no one would buy if the Japanese cars weren't so expensive due to tariffs. How is the consumer benefitting? He (or she) isn't. A small coterie of uncompetitive steel and car workers are, at his expense. Is that fair?

And, bluntly, economic development has winners and losers. When push comes to shove, I'm more sympathetic to 1) a worker in a developing country who has come from grinding poverty in a village where subsistence farming is the norm, who is working in a factory to provide a future for themselves and their family, than 2) someone sitting in a first world country who has lost their highly unionised job because of competition. The needs of the former feel a bit more urgent than the needs of the latter, social issues created notwithstanding. Because the flipside to non-competition from developing countries is non-development in developing countries - you know, infant mortality, malnutrition, that sort of thing.

[quote=]A: And anyway, what would you do about it? The Chinese are here. Economies adapt and change over time. Trying to prevent that, especially through protected markets and government spending, is simply storing up trouble. Southern Europe is finding this out now.

B: Fair trade not free trade. American companies are fighting with one hand tied behind their back. They're competing with China where
1) there are lower labor costs
2) there are human rights abuses-you strike? The government runs you over with a tank.
3) There are no environmental protections.
4) China keeps its currency devalued.
5) American goods are taxed to high heaven coming in.
China is already violating the trade agreements we have in place. Tax their goods the same way they do ours, but higher until they start giving their workers a decent wage, bathroom breaks, and air they can breathe.

People line up for these factory jobs precisely because they offer a way out of a poverty neither you nor I can imagine. Bathroom breaks? Sure, I wouldn't want to work on a Chinese production line either, but then consider the alternative they face. They aren't coming home to US standards of living.

Also, if you go on strike in China, you don't get run over by a tank. Tiananmen was about democratic rights, not wages. Actually, there has recently been a rash of strikes in Chinese factories and they got - guess what? - pay rises rather than the jackboot. In fact, wages in China are rising quite fast - the endless pool of young workers is drying up due to the one-child policy. I'm not claiming that China isn't a dictatorship in which human rights are not the primary concern of the leadership. But they tend not to interfere so much in business - challenging the authority of the state, on the other hand, is something different.

I think the US going on about pollution is also a bit rich consider that the US produces massive amounts of greenhouse gases and has caused plenty of environmental degradation in its time (plunging water tables in the South-West, for example). People begin to care about the environment the richer they get, so arguably the development of China will help with environmental standards. There is a nascent Green movement in China. And while environmental concerns aren't that high generally, there seems to be a growing appreciation that it can't be ignored either.

The currency devaluation thing is moot, as well. I've seen conflicting stuff about that and whether it is fair valued or not. Their tariffs I'm not clear on, but China's world trade is actually fairly balanced overall - they import lots of raw materials and capital equipment, and export finished manufactured goods. So someone is doing alright - just not the US.

You talk about "fair trade" as opposed to "free trade". Fair according to whom? In the end, you are basically talking about protectionism. That doesn't have a good reputation for solving anything, as it leads to beggar-thy-neighbour retaliatory responses. Part of the reason the Great Depression of the 1930s was go awful was because of Smoot-Hawley and its impact on trade.

[Quote=]A: The stuff about the environment is something of a red herring. Yes, there are environmental abuses, but they are hardly confined to China or the developing world (like BP in the Gulf). The issue is cost of labour, land and productivity of resources.

B: In America BP in the gulf was a disaster. In china its Tuesday.

A: See above. This is lump of labour fallacy again.

B: You're making the opposite error in assuming that labor is perfectly fluid: that for every job lost another will be made. That is patently not the case: we're seeing a good pit of friction from the labor balloon expanding.

See above re the environment in China. I'm not denying it entirely. But again, America produces its fair share of pollution too.

Well, that's lump of labour for you. But I also don't deny that on a local level there will be pockets of unemployment (and obviously, in a recession like this, big, big pockets on a cyclical basis). But technological change creates new and different opportunities that cannot necessarily be foreseen. For example, ecommerce has been a boon to courier companies. So while the rise of Amazon has been bad for brick and mortar booksellers, it's been great for couriers. Should we protect bookshops, and tax courier companies? Which employs more? Whole new industries (especially in services) have grown up in the last century (apparently PR, for example, didn't exist until the early 20th Century - you might not like PR people, but I can't see how they have displaced other workers). So, overall, I don't buy it except on a localised level. And skills and labour mobility are the issue then.

[Quote=]A: Not so much in the UK, to be fair, Murdoch notwithstanding.

B: Right, because he only broke the law and bribed the government agency that's responsible for catching him breaking the law... do you want to put bets on how many days he serves in jail? I have 210 to 1 odds on 0.

That's something of a distortion. He himself didn't seem to know what was going on (the paper in question providing less that 1% of corporate revenues) and he didn't "bribe" police officers to look the other way. Police officers were paid for news on current stories by some News International employees, rather than for them to actually do anything. Not saying it's right, and News Corp seems a bit ethics-free and to have appalling corporate governance. But yeah, on that basis, I can't see Rupert going to jail.

[Quote=]A: The rules in the US strike me as pretty stupid, but then again it can be seen (not that I do) as free speech. I can see how it is potentially corrupting, but politics is at its heart about compromise and relationship-building, so a lot of this will go on anyway.

B: And what you have is the interests of the entire country being compromised with the interests of an incredibly small segment of the population with equal or greater weight being given to the smaller segment because they have the money.

Quite - see above re vested interested.

[Quote=]A: It depends on political culture - talking about Europe, things seem to be cleaner in northern Europe rather than southern Europe, and we can debate Protestantism v Catholicism and its effects in that, for example.

You can. I can't. I have noooo idea how religion enters into it over there.

It was more a non-sequitur comment than anything else.

[Quote=]A: But it strikes me as somewhat beside the point. The rioting doesn't seem to me to have much to do with evil corporations. There are issues about the collapse of the traditional manual jobs done by the working classes, which is associated with the trend for these jobs to go overseas.

B: The connection is patently obvious: The evil corporations wanted to roll around in even more money, so they sent the labor jobs overseas to china, screwing hard working people out of a living so they could get richer.

To some extent, since a lot of these people seem to have had jobs, but this is an example of localised problems. I've already commented above on this.

[Quote=]A: But I don't consider that trying to stand in the way of global economic trends is a great way to address this - it has been tried, and it didn't work so well (see Portugal)

It has worked ok for highly socialized nations putting high taxes on said corporations, so that the people they're collectively screwing over are at least getting food and medical care.

Except, of course, it seems to be unravelling in many of those places. Southern Europe are examples of such a places, and it's not going so well now.

[Quote=]A: It seems that having a well-educated, flexible workforce is the way to go about it. For me, this is the deficit which has not been addressed.

B: The same corporations that are shipping people overseas are the ones against the taxes that might be used to pay for a well educated flexible workforce.

I agree - this is the role of the state in all of this: to provide education that equips people for the markets in which they live and operate. It doesn't require punitive taxes to get there, though.

Hi, BigNorseWolf. While the original thread has been locked, you raised some points in your reply to me I'd like to respond to. As we aren't spewing hate at one another, I'm assuming this is acceptable

[Quote=]
A: That's actually considered debatable, rather than a proven truth. However, extended deficit spending right now is probably not a great idea, as the downgrades and turmoil going on in the markets suggests.

B: It's about as proven as anything can get in the murky realms of "what if" economics and history. It PROBABLY helped the economy but there's absolutely no doubt that it helped the individuals involved by giving them enough cash to buy food for their families, job skills, some pride. It also definitely helped the nation by building up the infrastructure. So it's definitely a double win, and possibly a triple.

I think it also disproves the idea that people were out of work because they're lazy. As soon as the government put up a sign saying "work here" veritable armies of people showed up to do it.

Even if deficit spending is a good idea (and I'm not especially denying it under the circumstances we find ourselves in) there is a limit to what can be done with debt levels so high, and from where it becomes counter-productive. More below.

I didn't say all people are unemployed because they are lazy. I doubt the vast majority are. I am lazy and even I went and found myself a job. More below.

[quote=]A: You already are. They are getting restive, as comments from the official news agency indicate. There are probably limits to what they will accept.

We're too big to fail. We're not only their biggest borrower we're their biggest customer. If we're not buying more things than we need their entire system shuts down. America would have riots that would end with some minor legislative changes. China would have riots that would end in revolt. So we can play chicken with china because we're driving and SUV and they've got a smartcar. Suckers.

Hmm. So everyone is getting excited about nothing, are they? Actually, the US doesn't need to default to do itself a lot of damage. Yes, a lot of Chinese money is tied up in US Treasuries, and falls in the value of that debt would hurt them. They hold that money as foreign exchange reserves. That could come from falls in the value of the debt due to credit downgrades and from falls in the value of the dollar itself, which would probably happen in concert if some serious downgrades happened and also be self-reinforcing.

However, a fall in the value of US debt would actually not be very helpful for your spending plans. The flipside of falling values of debt is increasing interest costs. A brief example: a US Treasury, face value $1, is issued with a 5% interest rate on the face value payable to the purchaser, and will repay in full in five years. Due to credit concerns, the value in the market of that Treasury falls to $0.90. If that bond is then sold by the purchaser to someone else at $0.90, the actual interest rate is 5%x1/0.90 = 5.5%. If the government, under those market conditions, wants to sell Treasuries to new investors, the rate they would have to pay would be 5.5%, because that is the going rate in the market.

For a foreign investor (like the Chinese) the fall in value of the dollar adds an added layer of risk, which might also mean they demand a higher interest rate in the market. And there's another implication. The US is in the happy position of providing the world's reserve currency, i.e. the currency which other central banks will predominately hold their currency reserves in. Because of this, funding cost for the US government are a bit lower than they otherwise would be (this is a factor of the additional demand for dollar assets as opposed to, say, sterling). But this is a right that is earned in part by economic size but also be economic stewardship. If it looked like the US was willing to "play chicken" with the markets, it is hard to believe that reserve currency status would be maintained, also increasing funding costs.

So you can see that not paying attention to your credit rating will impact on how much it costs the government to fund itself, so in fact that would impact on how much money, after interest costs was left over for spending. Also bear in mind that corporate borrowings are also priced off US Treasuries, so companies would have less to invest. In the US (not the UK) mortgage rates are also priced off US Treasuries, so it would raise prices for the average guy in the street. Couple that with a falling dollar, and you would see rising inflation along with rising debt costs. That's not a recipe for a happy economy. And that's before you even bring the costs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security into the mix.

And then think of the political implications. A US government that doesn't stand behind its own credit rating would have a lot of trouble telling anyone else what to do, which could damage any diplomatic efforts. There would almost certainly be reduced spending of stuff like defence, which would mean that the US's role as the world's policeman would suffer. And who would you like to step into that role? China? I've nothing against the Chinese as such but at the moment they are an autocratic dictatorial oligarchy with no genuine respect for human rights. Would was want to leave the world in their grasp?

And even if China did bail out the US (assuming they could afford it, and actually their economy isn't that big even if it is growing fast) what would be the impact of that? Increased Chinese dominance on the world stage, in business (NEWSFLASH - CHINA BUYS WALMART!) and so on. China doesn't have much of a consumer culture and if the Chinese start selling to themselves, they won't even need the US as a market that much. And if the Chinese don't blink? I mean, there's lots of developed countries who would like to borrow from the Chinese at the moment. What if they decide to hold their reserves in euros or sterling?

US dominance is not a given. In fact, it is a fairly new phenomenon (from the Spanish-American War). Remember, I'm British - we had a global empire considerably less than a century ago, and are now very much a middle-ranking economy on the edge of Europe.

[Quote=]A: Also true, but I get irritated by people telling me about the horrors of unemployment when I have experienced them and they don't seem to have done.

B: It's hard to tell what the other person has or hasn't experienced. It could also be vastly different in their country or even by city.

That's also true.

[Quote=]A: Firstly, company B will offer cheaper products to the market. That benefits consumers.

B: It does.. unless one of those consumers used to make the product. You however reach a tipping point where the cheap products can't be bought because the consumers have no money. It's a matter of group vs individual benefit. In an ideal world, everyone else would make things in an expensive country in order to provide you with rich consumers for your cheap products.

A: Think about what you have in your house and where it was made. Secondly, tying up resources in an activity which can be more productively carried out elsewhere is a way of being inefficient, which actually reduces wealth for everyone. This was established by Ricardo a long time ago.

B: Equivocation: everyone is not everyone.
A group is not synonymous with an aggregate of the individuals within it. If you have a group of 10 people making 10,000 dollars each, or 5 people making 20,000 and 5 people making nothing the GROUP is the same, but the individuals are not.
If a job is exported to china the benefit and savings is dispersed among all of the consumers, saving them say 3 dollars per unit. The downside is that the cost is localized and the employees are loosing 18,000 dollars or whatever their salary was. You can't just look at things from a macro point of view: that's how we got into this mess.

You can't design policy for individuals. Plus, individuals change. Economies change. Tastes and technology change. My mother used to use a Kalamazoo counting machine, a sort of mechanical computer / calculator, in the late fifties and early sixties to do the payroll for the company she worked for. Now, that technology is clearly obsolete with the advent of computing. But what did the guys who used to make the machines think about the rise of computing think? Were they worried they would be laid off, flung on the scrap-heap with irrelevant skills? Maybe. Should they have been protected, by placing restrictions on people using computers, the purchase of computers, extra taxes for computerised payrolls to discourage the use of computers, and so on? Clearly, such a policy would have been ultimately bad for everyone, given that computing has revolutionised pretty much everything.

So maybe that's a silly, straw man example. But how do you choose which industries to protect, and which to throw to the wolves? If you are talking about government action, you are basically talking about civil servants and their political masters (yes, politicians, those corrupt bastards we were talking about before) having the say. Do you trust them to predict correctly? How would you prevent corrupt vested interests - you know, those terrible corporations (and unions) lining the pockets of the terrible corrupt politicians - manipulating such a policy to their own ends. And that's not exactly a rhetorical question - a lot of lobbying is about maintaining the status quo and the flow of subsidies to inefficient industries that need the funds to survive, at the expense of tax payers and consumers. In fact, the whole process could help corrupt the political system without adequate checks and balances. Oh, look....

Perhaps we should consider the exporting of a steel-worker's job from Pennsylvania to Romania instead. You don't have to predict technological trends, you are making rolled steel. But the plant in Romania makes it cheaper - lower overheads, not need to pay for expensive healthcare and benefits, probably fewer people in the process. Clearly, if the steel plant closes, that would be bad for the local community. A lot of the problems of long-term unemployment stem from people living in areas where the big employers have gone down, possessing skills which are useful in those defunct industries but not much elsewhere, and nothing much has come to replace the lost jobs. It's bad for those people and it is bad for the fabric of the society in which they live.

But...

What can you actually do about it? There is actually plenty of manufacturing going on in developed countries, but it tends to be high tech. The answer, surely, is to ensure that people are provided with the skills they need. But what about the users of that steel? Why should a car company have to pay over the odds for steel? And to whom would it pass the costs? Well, the consumer. And what about competition to the car firms from firms using cheaper, non-US steel - unless you decide to protect the car firms too. Of course, a company that doesn't have to compete doesn't have to try very hard either, of course - so you'll probably get an expensive, s*@* car made with s$$& steel that actually no one would buy if the Japanese cars weren't so expensive due to tariffs. How is the consumer benefitting? He (or she) isn't. A small coterie of uncompetitive steel and car workers are, at his expense. Is that fair?

And, bluntly, economic development has winners and losers. When push comes to shove, I'm more sympathetic to 1) a worker in a developing country who has come from grinding poverty in a village where subsistence farming is the norm, who is working in a factory to provide a future for themselves and their family, than 2) someone sitting in a first world country who has lost their highly unionised job because of competition. The needs of the former feel a bit more urgent than the needs of the latter, social issues created notwithstanding. Because the flipside to non-competition from developing countries is non-development in developing countries - you know, infant mortality, malnutrition, that sort of thing.

[quote=]A: And anyway, what would you do about it? The Chinese are here. Economies adapt and change over time. Trying to prevent that, especially through protected markets and government spending, is simply storing up trouble. Southern Europe is finding this out now.

B: Fair trade not free trade. American companies are fighting with one hand tied behind their back. They're competing with China where
1) there are lower labor costs
2) there are human rights abuses-you strike? The government runs you over with a tank.
3) There are no environmental protections.
4) China keeps its currency devalued.
5) American goods are taxed to high heaven coming in.
China is already violating the trade agreements we have in place. Tax their goods the same way they do ours, but higher until they start giving their workers a decent wage, bathroom breaks, and air they can breathe.

People line up for these factory jobs precisely because they offer a way out of a poverty neither you nor I can imagine. Bathroom breaks? Sure, I wouldn't want to work on a Chinese production line either, but then consider the alternative they face. They aren't coming home to US standards of living.

Also, if you go on strike in China, you don't get run over by a tank. Tiananmen was about democratic rights, not wages. Actually, there has recently been a rash of strikes in Chinese factories and they got - guess what? - pay rises rather than the jackboot. In fact, wages in China are rising quite fast - the endless pool of young workers is drying up due to the one-child policy. I'm not claiming that China isn't a dictatorship in which human rights are not the primary concern of the leadership. But they tend not to interfere so much in business - challenging the authority of the state, on the other hand, is something different.

I think the US going on about pollution is also a bit rich consider that the US produces massive amounts of greenhouse gases and has caused plenty of environmental degradation in its time (plunging water tables in the South-West, for example). People begin to care about the environment the richer they get, so arguably the development of China will help with environmental standards. There is a nascent Green movement in China. And while environmental concerns aren't that high generally, there seems to be a growing appreciation that it can't be ignored either.

The currency devaluation thing is moot, as well. I've seen conflicting stuff about that and whether it is fair valued or not. Their tariffs I'm not clear on, but China's world trade is actually fairly balanced overall - they import lots of raw materials and capital equipment, and export finished manufactured goods. So someone is doing alright - just not the US.

You talk about "fair trade" as opposed to "free trade". Fair according to whom? In the end, you are basically talking about protectionism. That doesn't have a good reputation for solving anything, as it leads to beggar-thy-neighbour retaliatory responses. Part of the reason the Great Depression of the 1930s was go awful was because of Smoot-Hawley and its impact on trade.

[Quote=]A: The stuff about the environment is something of a red herring. Yes, there are environmental abuses, but they are hardly confined to China or the developing world (like BP in the Gulf). The issue is cost of labour, land and productivity of resources.

B: In America BP in the gulf was a disaster. In china its Tuesday.

A: See above. This is lump of labour fallacy again.

B: You're making the opposite error in assuming that labor is perfectly fluid: that for every job lost another will be made. That is patently not the case: we're seeing a good pit of friction from the labor balloon expanding.

See above re the environment in China. I'm not denying it entirely. But again, America produces its fair share of pollution too.

Well, that's lump of labour for you. But I also don't deny that on a local level there will be pockets of unemployment (and obviously, in a recession like this, big, big pockets on a cyclical basis). But technological change creates new and different opportunities that cannot necessarily be foreseen. For example, ecommerce has been a boon to courier companies. So while the rise of Amazon has been bad for brick and mortar booksellers, it's been great for couriers. Should we protect bookshops, and tax courier companies? Which employs more? Whole new industries (especially in services) have grown up in the last century (apparently PR, for example, didn't exist until the early 20th Century - you might not like PR people, but I can't see how they have displaced other workers). So, overall, I don't buy it except on a localised level. And skills and labour mobility are the issue then.

[Quote=]A: Not so much in the UK, to be fair, Murdoch notwithstanding.

B: Right, because he only broke the law and bribed the government agency that's responsible for catching him breaking the law... do you want to put bets on how many days he serves in jail? I have 210 to 1 odds on 0.

That's something of a distortion. He himself didn't seem to know what was going on (the paper in question providing less that 1% of corporate revenues) and he didn't "bribe" police officers to look the other way. Police officers were paid for news on current stories by some News International employees, rather than for them to actually do anything. Not saying it's right, and News Corp seems a bit ethics-free and to have appalling corporate governance. But yeah, on that basis, I can't see Rupert going to jail.

[Quote=]A: The rules in the US strike me as pretty stupid, but then again it can be seen (not that I do) as free speech. I can see how it is potentially corrupting, but politics is at its heart about compromise and relationship-building, so a lot of this will go on anyway.

B: And what you have is the interests of the entire country being compromised with the interests of an incredibly small segment of the population with equal or greater weight being given to the smaller segment because they have the money.

Quite - see above re vested interested. Your suggestion seems counter-productive in that respect.

[Quote=]A: It depends on political culture - talking about Europe, things seem to be cleaner in northern Europe rather than southern Europe, and we can debate Protestantism v Catholicism and its effects in that, for example.

You can. I can't. I have noooo idea how religion enters into it over there.

It was more a non-sequitur comment than anything else.

[Quote=]A: But it strikes me as somewhat beside the point. The rioting doesn't seem to me to have much to do with evil corporations. There are issues about the collapse of the traditional manual jobs done by the working classes, which is associated with the trend for these jobs to go overseas.

B: The connection is patently obvious: The evil corporations wanted to roll around in even more money, so they sent the labor jobs overseas to china, screwing hard working people out of a living so they could get richer.

To some extent, since a lot of these people seem to have had jobs, but this is an example of localised problems. I've already commented above on this.

[Quote=]A: But I don't consider that trying to stand in the way of global economic trends is a great way to address this - it has been tried, and it didn't work so well (see Portugal)

It has worked ok for highly socialized nations putting high taxes on said corporations, so that the people they're collectively screwing over are at least getting food and medical care.

Except, of course, it seems to be unravelling in many of those places. Southern Europe are examples of such a places, and it's not going so well now.

[Quote=]A: It seems that having a well-educated, flexible workforce is the way to go about it. For me, this is the deficit which has not been addressed.

B: The same corporations that are shipping people overseas are the ones against the taxes that might be used to pay for a well educated flexible workforce.

I agree - this is the role of the state in all of this: to provide education that equips people for the markets in which they live and operate. It doesn't require punitive taxes to get there, though.

I'm curious - how compatible is Essentials with the earlier version of the game in the PHB? I ask because, based on my limited experience, some of the feats seem to be of a higher power level than might otherwise be expected. I know WotC say it is mechanically the same and fully-compatible, but are Essentials character more or less powerful than those created from the pre-Essentials sources? Also, and most pertinently for me, what happens if you mix Essentials material (like the feats) with pre-Essentials character classes? Do you end up with power-creep?

The link to the Paizo Blog seems to link to the Web Fiction page instead.

A quick place-holder while I gather my thoughts.

Looking for one or two players to add to an existing group, but starting a new campaign. Berik, you mentioned an interest in another thread, but any interest is welcome. We are a bit light on strikers.

My ongoing 4e Kingmaker PbP on these boards is looking for a couple of new players as we have had two drop out. If anyone is interested, please post here or here. The characters are still all at 1st level and we are at a very early stage in Stolen Lands.

I'm running a PbP of Kingmaker and it is throwing up some interesting issues around rulership. It's early days but they have some bandit captives and the PC's are wondering what to do with them. They don't really want to indisciminately execute them (though they have killed one) especially as one of them is "mentally ill". They don't really want to use corporal punishment and then send them on their way (known by the technical term "beat and release") as they might come back or become someone else's problem. And they don't really want to watch over them while the pay off their debt to society as they don't, at the moment, have the resources.

Have any other sorts of issues like these blown up in other games of Kingmaker? How have they been dealt with?

EDIT: Oops, should probably have mentioned that his might contain spoilers.

So, was it a deliberate decision or an oversight to remove the Scent ability from minotaurs in converting from 3.5 to PFRPG? It's no big deal (I can just give it back) but I'm curious why it was done.

"Be it so known that the bearer of this charter has been charged by the Swordlords of Restov, acting upon the greater good and authority vested within them by the office of the Regent of the Dragonscale Throne, has granted the right of exploration and travel within the wilderness region known as the Greenbelt. Exploration should be limited to an area no further than thirty-six miles east and west and sixty miles south of Oleg’s Trading Post. The carrier of this charter should also strive against banditry and other unlawful behavior to be encountered. The punishment for unrepentant banditry remains, as always, execution by sword or rope. So witnessed on this 24th day of Calistril, under watchful eye of the Lordship of Restov and authority granted by Lord Noleski Surtova, current Regent of the Dragonscale Throne."

Well, that's what the charter the reeve gave the group said. Exploring the unknown, putting wrongs to right. All stuff to stir the blood of anyone with ambition and talent.

The reality is somewhat less exciting. A tramp on foot from Restov to Oleg's Trading Post, where the track finally petered out. A hamlet so insignificant that all it really comprises is the titular establishment and a few mean hovels where colonists try to beat back the encroaching wilderness and farm; the incessant pitter-patter of the rain; water and mud soaking into every pore; surly and disgruntled peasants looking on in dumb insolence.

These are the things from which greatness is born.

Or something.

OK, you have just arrived at Oleg's Trading Post. Time to roleplay while you bring your character sheets up to scratch.

Ok, I'm sticking up a thread here to try and organise things. At this point I want to gauge interest from the assembled worthies on the other threads. I have basically a series of maybe's from:

- Mothy
- Vatters
- Ithers
- Raggy
- AinvarG-y
- Heathy

A more maybe maybe is Old Guy. And that's about all my jetlag-fuddled brain can remember - apologies if I left you out and you were gagging for it, but then that's why I put up the thread.

Now, I probably want to run with six max, so I may need to winnow things down. As we all know, there is very likely going to be a 4e Dark Sun run by Heathy in the next few months. So I guess the questions are:

- who wants to be in the 4e Kingmaker by preference?
- who wants to be in Heathy's 4e Dark Sun by preference?
- who is greedy and wants to be in both?
- who is meh about the whole thing and is just being polite?

Off the back of that, if I end up with less than five, I'll advertise on Gamer Connection. Your votes, please (and any other queries)!

(Oh, and bear in mind I might not actually reply for a week.)

Could you please cancel both of these pre-orders please? Thank you.

A player in a game I am DM'ing has chosen a beast master ranger as his PC. I can't help thinking that it's a bit under powered, as well as being quite poorly explained (do the beast's defences and attacks go up every level, for example, or just every other level as normal?) in the book. Does anyone else have experience with this?

Gary, my PbP threads are growing in length and while they aren't as long as Heathy's, they are getting that way (especially my Eberron one). While I have no problem with setting up a new thread to save the site from having difficulties, I would have a problem if I couldn't access the old thread since I refer to it for details about names, places and so on (it has been running for two years and my memory isn't good enough to remember stuff I made up on the spur of the moment). Do you think it is likely I will have to set up a new thread anyway? Is it likely I would not be able to access the old thread for any length of time under those circumstances? Would it be better to set up a new thread now before the old one reaches a threatening length, so I can always have access to it in the archive?

I've started a 4e campaign with my real-world group. We'll post up some stuff as we go along. In the meantime, here is some background I did for the guys to detail the setting.

The land

The campaign will take place mostly in the Southern Hinterlands. This is an area of mountains, broken foothills and scrub heading further south to desert. The mountains are high and snowy, effectively blocking rainfall from the north, and are covered in thick pine and azalea cloud forests on their upper flanks. Lower still, species adapted to the increasing lack of water predominate – cacti, yuccas and other succulents as the mountains turn into hills and then out into the dry plains.

The area is fairly thinly settled, with most habitation centred around water sources and the few trade routes to the north. There is one main centre of civilisation, the City of the Five, but it seems to have little interest in dominion and most settlements are small self-governing towns and villages. In addition, there is a significant population of nomadic humanoids – in particular, goblins, gnolls and dragonborn – who wander the region. Ruins of unknown provenance dot the desert, and are mostly avoided as cursed.

The areas to the east, west and south are relatively unexplored and unknown. North of the mountains is the wreckage of the Hajputene Empire, which collapsed amid failed military adventurism, civil war and orcish invasion about a century ago. It is a fertile land, but now most comprises warring petty bandit kingdoms and orcish warbands.

The inhabitants

Humans

Most humans are descendants of Hajputene émigrés who headed south following the trade routes while the Empire still stood. They make up most of the population of the towns and villages in the region, and are generally self-sufficient and open-minded individuals, hanging on to a mixture of Hajputene culture mixed with more local customs.

In addition, the inhabitants of the City of the Five form a distinct human culture in the Southern Hinterlands. Worshipping five living deities, they claim that the city has existed “for ever”, certainly predating any other historical empires. City-dwellers tend to be cautious and insular, rarely stray from their homeland, and are dismissive of other cultures as “inferior”.

Dragonborn

The majority of dragonborn are nomadic herders, roaming across the region with their herds of reptilian herbivores, though a few have taken up a settled life in the human towns. The dragonborn split into different bloodlines, which reflects their different breath weapons, though an individual band or tribe will often comprise members from several blood lines. The tribes themselves vary in how they deal with outsiders; some a relatively friendly, while at the opposite end of the spectrum some are actively hostile and attack trespassers in what they regard as their territory.

Every few decades, the aggressive tribes gather together under a charismatic leader and attack the established settlements, particularly the City of the Five. Such assaults are normally rebuffed with such terrible dragonborn casualties that it takes several generations for the nomad populations to recover.

Dwarves

Most dwarves live in small settlements in the hills and mountain passes, eking a living as traders, bandits and miners. Their civilisation was largely destroyed by the orcish hordes that ultimately destroyed the Hajputene Empire, though with their longer lifespans and memories the dwarves cling bitterly to their old ways with greater tenacity that the more adaptable humans.

Only one of their “deep delves”, or underground cities, remains occupied by dwarves, the redoubt of Zarrenkar. While retaining a shadow of the grandeur that once filled the halls with dwarven artifice and industry, it is now an insular and xenophobic kingdom falling into decadence, its cavernous spaces now mostly empty.

Eladrin, elves and half-elves

The fey races inhabit the cool mountain forests. The elves live in their rustic villages and patrol the woods, challenging or waylaying intruders as they see fit. The eladrin form the hereditary nobility, though they lack an interest in oppressing their elven subjects and largely leave them to their own devices. They inhabit mist-cloaked towers and engage in their own inscrutable interests.

Trade or other contact between the fey races and the other inhabitants of the region is rare, as the townsfolk and the nomads have virtually nothing the eladrin or elves want or need. Occasionally, a curious elf ranger or eladrin noble may stray into the lands of their neighbours out of curiosity, and may even stay for a few decades. Half-elves often result from such sojourns, though they are nevertheless extremely rare. Their fey parent almost never takes them back to their homeland, seemingly out of embarrassment, and they are instead brought up in the towns where they are left.

Halflings

Halfling caravans ply the trade routes across the region, from the City of the Five, though the mountain passes and across the wreckage of the Hajputene Empire. Traders, tinkers, irrepressible thieves and bearers of the latest news, the visit of a halfling band to an outlying village is both eagerly anticipated and dreaded. The larger settlements often have shantytowns where halflings live semi-permanently, often despised for their larcenous ways, though few individual halflings will actually reside there for more than a few months.

In addition, a substantial minority of halflings have integrated more fully into the societies in which they live, giving up their itinerant ways and settling down. Most blend in fairly imperceptibly, though some still suffer prejudice due to the activities of their less conventional cousins.

Tieflings

In its latter years, the nobility of the Hajputene Empire began to mix its bloodline with extra-dimensional entities, such as fey, demons and devils. This was intended to strengthen lineages which had grown increasingly effete, decadent and inbred and forestall the collapse of the empire they commanded. While the experiments failed to prevent the ultimate collapse, they did result in the creation of a new race: the tieflings.

Reaction to tieflings varies, with some considering them abominations, others treating them as just another exotic race amongst many, and all shades in between. They can vary in appearance from fairly monstrous to barely perceptibly different to their human forebears, though all carry a whiff of otherness about them which causes them to stand out. A few attempt to retain the airs and graces of the nobility from which they are descended, though most are just normal individuals trying to make their way in the world. Few in number, most tieflings live amongst the other races in the larger towns.

Goblins

The desert goblins form small wandering tribes or live in semi-permanent camps near water sources. They are generally peaceful, being small and relatively weak, and live by hunting nocturnal small game and gathering grubs and roots. However, a tribe will often engage in low-level thievery and occasional banditry if they think they can get away with it (and their naturally cautious nature means they will rarely attack a target capable of offering resistance without overwhelming numbers). Consequently, goblins are little trusted, though some trading between them and the other races takes place on an infrequent basis. Desert goblins are between three and four feet tall and have large bat ears, hairless wrinkled skin, pug noses and jet back eyes with long lashes.

Gnolls

Gnolls are generally rapacious hooligans, travelling in bands and attacking outlying villages and nomad encampments for food and booty. Gnolls might trade with a well-armed and numerous party, but more generally they will attack anyone they come across, shooting with their bows from afar and sending their hyena hunting packs to engage in melee. Gnolls are generally unwelcome in civilisation, and are generally attacked on sight.

Orcs

Orcs are creatures of the mountains, and rarely stray into the desert. After defeating the dwarves, and with their numbers swelled by a series of mild winters, they broke over the already ailing Hajputene Empire like a wave, bringing it to an end in a tide of blood. Fortunately, the orcs have spent the remainder of the last century fighting with the human successor states and with each other. This has acted as a check on their numbers and prevented them from eying the Southern Hinterlands for possible conquest. A few orcish chieftains have attempted to establish petty kingdoms for themselves, but these rarely last beyond the death of the founder. Most orc leaders lack such vision, and simply spend their days in a haze of internecine violence and death.

History

The Southern Hinterlands existed at the southern border of the Hajputene Empire. The mountain chains that divided the Empire from the lands beyond acted as a fairly secure barrier, and the dried-out scrub and deserts beyond provided little incentive for conquest. As a consequence, the Empire was content to ignore the area as it concentrated on richer territories further north. The only settlement of any real size was the City of the Five, and as its unfathomable divine rulers showed very little interest in extending their influence beyond their immediate environs the Empire did not initially feel a need to concentrate on its southern borders. Enterprising Hajputene merchants headed through the mountain passes to trade with the City, establishing way stations that turned into towns and villages. However, the status of these new settlements was left fairly vague, and the imperial military presence within them was light.

The status quo changed about one and a half centuries ago. The Empire was suffering from senescence, with its further-flung provinces were becoming restive and the loyalty of its governors suspect. Meanwhile, the Imperial Court was mostly engaged in vicious internal politicking and the quality of the imperial administration suffered as factional loyalty was elevated over competence. In order to stamp his authority and gain prestige in order to wrest more control to himself, the new tiefling Emperor Gajeshnan VI decided he needed a quick show of force.

As a consequence, he decided upon the apparently simple task of annexing the City of the Five to the Empire. Marching south through the mountains at the head of his army, with the royal household in tow, Gajeshnan confronted the tiny army of the Five a few days ride north of the City, hoping that a show of force would cow its rulers. Instead, in a titanic display of magical power, the Five obliterated the imperial legions almost to a man (and leaving a blasted place plagued by undead to this day known as the Bonefields). With the leader of the empire dead along with his key advisors and heirs, the Empire proceeded to distract itself with a series of civil wars over the succession to the imperial throne and breakaway provinces. Unable to properly defend its borders, the rising orc menace in the southern mountains eventually broke what was left of central authority about a century ago. The orc horde of Skrarg Bloodeye killed the last emperor, Gajeshnan XI, in the final battle for the imperial capital, Hajput.

Following the collapse of the empire, refugees from the chaos headed south towards the relatively safe havens of the Southern Hinterlands. The hundred years has been a relatively quiet period of consolidation under the disinterested suzerainty of the Five.

We are looking to recruit a new player to a long-standing group with vacancies following various moves and relocations. We generally meet every other Sunday, from 4pm to 9pm, at eachothers houses in Worcester, Stourbridge and Rugby on a rotating basis (effectively, the West Midlands). Our RQ campaign is drawing to a close and our next campaign will be 4e. If there is anyone in the area who would be interested in joining us (we are looking for a commitment to join long term) please don't hesitate to get in touch. Thanks.

Hi, in my orders I have my latest Pathfinder subscription order including both PF 12 and PF 13. While I don't really mind receiveing two at once, is it likely that this order will be sent soon? For example, is PF 13 likely to be available so soon after Crown of Fangs? The reason I ask is that I cannot download anything until the order is processed, and as I live in the UK the order takes a couple of weeks more to get to me after it is sent, downloading the modules is quite important so I can get my hands on it the faster. I would prefer if you just send the PF 12 now (plus whatever else is availble as part of my subscription package) and send PF 13 along later, unless delivery of PF 13 is imminent. I'm not terribly bothered about the postage costs and would like to be able to download the module reasonably soon.

PS: the title should read "Holding PF 12 for PF 13?". :-(

Sorry for the really dumb question, but where in the PHB does it say what the damage bonus is for using a two-handed weapon? I simply cannot find it, but I know there is one (as halflings don't get it). Thanks.

OK, I'm probably going to regret this, but.... A sort of plea for healing.

Why is there still back-and-forth about 4e vs 3e?

OK, there was anger when it was announced (especially as part of the package was the death of Dungeon and Dragon magazines in print), but how long ago was that - over a year? Then there was the speculation and rumour about what was in and what was out (gnomes out, dragonborn in) but we have actually had the game (if we wanted it) in our hands for a month or so now, so those issues are now settled. There is the GSL, but the OGL still exists and, off the back of it, we are getting Pathfinder products of acknowledged quality and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game next year, plus the OGL is still out there online and we still presumably have out books from before.

So what exactly are the arguments about now? What is the point? If you don't like 4e, what exactly do you achieve by posting about it, when instead you could post about the ongoing and exciting developments in 3e as it heads boldly into an admittedly uncertain future. Is there much point posting on the 4e threads how much you dislike the new game, when no one has actually taken away your old one and it continues to enjoy support from the best writers of adventures in the business?

So why do we still see arguments on the threads? I just don't understand it. Didn't the horse bolt ages ago?

(Try and keep this nice if you can.)

Sebastian, what have you done? The sinister bald guy simply "was" Sebastian. He was gazing down his nose while looking grumpy and ready for a fight. What the hell are you doing looking like My Little Pony? What is it - irony? It's just all wrong. Stop it! Bring back the sinister bald guy, or I will just be unable to speak with you ever again.

EDIT: No, I'm still outraged. It's like you had plastic surgery that went horribly wrong, against my advice. I'm going to have to lie down.

EDIT: Or is this a Paizo joke? Is nothing sacred to you guys?

EDIT: I might have to start a new thread saying I'm outta here because of Seb's new avatar and the emotional turmoil is has caused.

I really like the idea of two favoured classes - I think it works well. That said, I think there are a couple of areas where the extra classes chosen maybe don't seem quite right.

Gnome - bard or sorcerer. I don't have a big problem with this, but if the gnomes are so connected with the fey, why not bard and druid? Or even sorcerer and druid?

Halfling - rogue or wizard. Again, not a big issue, but wizard seems, I don't know, a bit random. I know they get a bonus to INT and all, but halfling wizards are not espcially iconic. Maybe sorcerer instead of wizard (though I accept that doesn't mesh so well with them not getting a CHA bonus), since it fits better with their more freewheeling ways? Or maybe bard (if we get radical and take it away from the gnomes, though I understand that this could affect compatibility)?

Half-orc - barbarian or cleric. Half-orcs used to be quite cleric-y in 1e and 2e, especially when it came to the multiclassing options, so I have no real beef with this, though I was surprised initially.

I've got no issue with the others. Any comments?

I'm curious. My subscription is set up to go when my Pathfinder AP module arrives. So far as I know, this arrived last week. But per my order history, it seems to be being held up pending the arrival of the Pathfinder (non-AP) module "Heart of Darkness" (or whatever). How does it actually work in practice? I don't really mind that much but I'd rather get my AP module as a priority, as indicated in my preferences, rather than hold on for a non-AP module. Or does it boil down to what is convenient in the warehouse (not an accusation, just a query)?

I'm in Hong Kong for the next two months or so (off and on). In the interests of promoting cultural links between members of the gaming community, anyone fancy a one-shot or two while I am here?

Forgive the rather pedestrian title - I don't do fancy campaign names. I'm going to do a quick opening paragraph, and then an individual post each for each character setting the scene (as you all have different reasons for being there). Please wait until all eight posts are done before wading in (which might take a couple of days, especially as I am flying to Ho ng Kong half way through)) as the action will beging immediately after the opening scene. Which follows...

Here is some setting info, reprised from the other campaign.

I'm thinking of running another Eberron campaign (different - well, probably not that different, but hey! - to the current one I am running). Is there any interest - looking for 5-6 players? (PsionicFox and Luke are in if they so desire.)

Hi, a quick query:

As the thread title suggests, I can't see my Planet Stories subscription showing up on my subscriptions page. I'm pretty sure I have one, as it shows up in my Order History, but I just want to check if the details are correct and at moment I can't.

Just a request - when thinking of a title for a thread, please give a thought for those playing the game who also browse these boards but might not have played through the adventures yet. Some of these thread titles, nevermind the contents, give the game away to some extent. Nualia this, Nualia that.... She's described as being dead to start with, but anyone idly running through the site can see he being mentioned all the time, so it won't take a genius to work it out. The same with Tsuto, Foxglove and probably others as the thing runs along.

I know its fun to talk about these things, and there is a trade off between clarity (i.e. getting your message across, and your post read and commented on) and spoileryness. I also know there is supposed to be a difference between PC knowledge and player knowledge (though, of course, there isn't really). But please try to give it some thought when coming up with thread titles, as it can otherwise detract slightly from player enjoyment.

Thank you.

It has been a busy day in Sandpoint. The reconsecration of the new temple started off with all the hubbub of a busy market, with hawkers, many from out of town, selling their wares and revellers enjoying the sights, sounds and tastes on offer. Acolytes processed, blowing rams’ horns and clashing cymbals, while litters bearing the images of six main deities worshipped in Sandpoint, garlanded with leaves and bearing the fruits of the fields, forests and seas of the locality, were borne through the streets with as much reverence as could be mustered amongst the festivities. A few red-faced locals, having overindulged in the cider, beer and mead on offer, scuffled briefly or grappled amorously before being hauled off by the forces of Sheriff Hemlock to cool off in the jailhouse.

Under the noonday sun, the first mists of autumn long since burned away, High Priest Zantus told the story of how the goddess Desna fell to earth and was nursed to health by a blind child. “And in her gratitude, Desna transformed the child into an immortal butterfly for her kindness and selflessness!” boomed Zantus at the climax of the tale. As he did so, a huge cloud of butterflies was released from underneath the litter bearing Desna’s graven idol to whoops and gasps from the crowd and renewed musical accompaniment from the priesthood.

The day draws on to early evening, and the town’s populace gradually begins to congregate in front of the new temple, one of the few stone-built buildings in Sandpoint, its shining limestone walls reddened by the sun as it sets beyond the horizon out to sea. The crowd falls into a respectful silence, as the day’s climax, the recitation of the Seven Prayers of Dreaming, is about to commence.

At the front, on a small podium, stand various of the great and good of Sandpoint: Mayor Deverin, a small but determined-looking woman with red hair; Sheriff Hemlock, a brooding Shoanti; Cyrdak Drokkus, foppish impressario of the Sandpoint Theatre; Lonjiku Kaijitsu, the owner of the glassworks with a reputation for tough bargaining; Titus Scarnetti, owner of the sawmill and would-be protector of the town’s morals; and Etram Valdemar, patriarch and shipbuilder. They watch Zantus as he rises up the steps of the main entrance and turns to address the crowd. Beside him, an acolyte strikes a large bronze bell that hangs from a wooden frame, its dolorous note echoing across the square.

Where are you? What are you doing?

OK, before anyone chips in - I'm afraid I have already got the players for this. I have:

Fakey
Heathy
Fatey
Vatters
Mothers (that's a soft "th" sound)
Draggers

and possibles...

Ithers
Stunty

So I'm well set for players, but thanks if you were interested. I'm sure someone else will run one of these too on the boards.

Same rules as before for character creation - 32 point buy, maximum starting money for the class. And anything funky please run by me before my highly likely acquiescence.

In case you haven't seen it yet, the Players Guide to the campaign is now out as a free PDF (I had mine sent to me as an email, but it is doubtless on the Paizo site somewhere). I suggest you read that first. And them post here - looking forward to it.

Bear in mind - my copy of the actual scenario is coming by international post, so I won't be up and running quite as fast as everyone else in the US.

Heathy, due to work pressure Sebastian has fallen by the wayside and can't participate in my Eberron PbP. When we discussed it briefly last time you said you might be interested. Is that still the case?

Seb, the title says it all - we have had a player drop out of my Eberron PBP. You expressed an interest when we started up and wondered if you fancied in?

A mildly interesting article in itself (see link), but I was struck by the name of the company in the last couple of paragraphs.

It’s a quiet night in the Spear of Dhakaan, a dark bar on the outskirts of the Bazaar in Middle Dura lit by the dim flickering of a few everburning torches . A group of goblin merchants yammer loudly at one another, shoving and shouting in the traditional goblin negotiating style. A bugbear bouncer sits on a stool and leans against a wall by the entrance, gently rocking with his eyes shut as a hobgoblin chanteuse belts out another dirge bewailing the fates of lost empires. Waitresses – human, shifter and goblinoid – yell orders at the bar and dodge groping hands from punters of all races, while a beggar, dressed in the tatterered remnants of a Brelish army uniform and presumably human under the filth, does the rounds of the tables. Pipes in the wall gurgle loudly, channelling away the water dumped on to the high towers of the city, while the storm hisses against the windows, rumbling and flashing with lightning. Gazing down aloofly on proceedings, a spire drake watches from its battered cage above the bar. It's hot, humid and smokey, and the smell of cheap goblin spirits, cooking food and too many unwashed bodies is almost overpowering.

Indeed, pretty quiet as these things go....

What are the PCs doing? Why are they here?

A simple question - would anyone fancy playing an Eberron campaign on these boards, DM'ed by moi?

I was doing a bit of surfing and found that New Line Cinema, who produced the LotR movies, are planning on doing the Hobbit movie without Peter Jackson due to an unresolved legal dispute. There has been a lot of breast-beating about how Jackson is the only man to do the Hobbit, and a lot of comment going the other way too.

Personally, I fall into the latter camp. I loved the first LotR movie, absoluted hated the second, and was pretty indifferent about the third. King Kong was OK, but nothing special. Jackson strikes as a somewhat self-indulgent movie maker who has problems in the editing suite. Many of the changes he made to the LotR for his adaptation were misguided in my opinion (putting Shelob in the third movie instead of finishing the second with her, making Frodo a big girl's blouse, Faramir a half-wit, Gimli the comic relief and the Nazgul really dumb and inept, the creeping and cloying sentimentality, leaving out the orc characters). Not to say that there weren't some great visuals and moments in the films, very high production values, and some of the changes were worthwhile (like seriously trimming down the meeting in Rivendell and the fight scene with the goblins on warg-back) and casting sublime (Ian McKellern, Andy Serkis and Sean Bean in particular). But overall I didn't really care for them - he lost me when, instead of judiciously editing the story as he did in the first film, he (and his script writers) started making silly changes to things in the second film simply to pad out the story, while leaving out loads of good stuff from the original book.

As such, I'm not really bothered if they make this film without Jackson as I don't see him as a unique talent. I suspect I won't much care for the Hobbit film either unless they try and stick more closely to the source. I'm just curious what others feel about this.

Anyone know anything about the proposed horror of a remake of this British classic? I've heard Nicolas Cage and bees.

I'm looking to use the above in drawing up some battlefield encounters and suchlike. Has anyone else got experience in using the book? Any tips and so on on how to get the best out of it? I'm not planning a military campaign, more a military "phase" in the campaign with two battles or so. I'm a bit intimidated as I have absolutely no military experience at all, and so nothing much real-world to "inspire" my D&D world. All comments welcome.

Maybe this has been noticed in another thread, but....

Are they alright at WotC? From refusing to release any adventures at all for years (not counting the Fantastic Locations) we are getting four at the end of 2006. What has caused this change of heart?

Has anyone had any experience with players using the weretouched master PrC (I don't mind about NPCs, especially villains - that's not the issue here)? It looks horribly unbalanced to me, particularly at the 5th (and final) level of the prestige class where you effectively (in game mechanics terms) become a lycanthrope when you shift? Choose the right animal heriatge (bear or tiger, especially) and you get huge increases to stats, a nifty animal or hybrid form, killer natural attacks.... Am I missing something? Has anyone used this PrC in anger and what were their experiences? How did DMs deal with the issues? Your thoughts would be welcome.

Question: are medusas immune to the gaze of other medusas? Not just a game-related questions, as such. I also wondered: if they can't gaze into eachother's eyes, where do baby medusas come from?