Black Dougal's page

It's too bad they didn't give Alice Eve mnore to work with. I am a red blooded male who like eye candy as much as anyone, but I did kinda expect Carol Marcus to have more presence. Anyone who can make a lasting impresion on Kirk Prime should have more to do than just window dressing.

I kinda find watching Alice Eve's work depressing at times. It strikes me that unless you are a hot shot starfleet captain, a movie star with enough cash to join Mark Cuban in a tequila IPO or a Pittsburgh airport security screener, you have no chance at ever dating someone like her. She is simply out of your league.

Black Dougal wrote:

Just saw it..

... $25/30 to see again in the theatre.

$25/30 to see a movie in the theater? Wow, where do you live???

13 bucks for a ticket, 13 bucks for a large coke and chilli nachos.

Just saw it..

The first hour was actualy pretty darn good. In the second half the action set pieces kinda overtook the story. I actually feel the same about this movie as I feel about Iron Man 3, fine for summer fare but neither makes me want to shell out 3 hours of my time and $25/30 to see again in the theatre.

SmiloDan wrote:

Ooh! A Planescape movie would be awesome! Jennifer Love Hewitt as Doomguard Factol Pentar!!!!!

Just....no.

As for the lawsuit...not really surprised...

I am no fan of what Hasbro did to D&D, but I must confess feelling that they are justified in their litigation. They do own the D&D brand and it feels to me like Sweetpea is not entitled to keep gaming the system in perpetuity.

I have read all 15 books about 3 times each. The first novel is probibly the weakest, and the focus of the series quickly shifts to their son Miles.

Once Mile's gets off planet, things take off dramatically, and by the time you get to a Civil Affir, which I think is book 12 or so, the emotional payoff from the main character and his past relationships is hiliarious. I think it is very similar to the dresden files, where the first two books are ok, but as the universe takes shape and gets fileld in, the series becomes a great guilty pleasure.

Don't expect any Honor Harrington type space battle descriptions, space battles are quick and painless..

Reading this thread, it seems my initial feeling upon reading it, that this module is somehow off, seems to have be correct one. Well, my personal gripe was that we were leaving the very interesting situation in Irrisen, to prance around in three dungeons, but there you go.

I agree Magnuskn, this module does not resonate with me at all. I understand the desire to show off the huts travel abilities, but even then this set of dungeons didn't really inspire me at all. Think I got spoiled with Shattered Star.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Because Nero was so worth it, right?

Still beats the hell out of Star Trek V.

Why does God...need a spaceship?

I would never thought I would say this, but I only recently saw Star Trek Nemesis and it is a close call between it and Star Trek V as to which I hate more.

Um where the heck did you gather that there are no romulans left? Romulus was destroyed some 20-30 years after TNG. In the ORIGINAL timeline.

ah right..too many timelines..needless to say, spock Prime should make it a priority to make sure there are Humpbacks.

All I care about is that Spock Prime makes sure there are still humpback whales around, because I don't want the earth destroyed by some random super powerful alien probe. I don't trust this Kirk to be able to get a cloaked Kligon bird of Prey back to 1985 (Afterall, no romulans left, no cloaking tech sold to Kligons, and so no bird of prey for kirk to board and capture).

Won't someone think of the whales!

Sounds promising. What would he need the money for?

Nice! :) I'm glad you got back to me so quickly. I have just the core rules as well. Do you live in the north or the south?

Northwest but as long as it is close to transit not a big problem going elsewhere in the city

Hi All!

Like the title states, I would like to create or join a Pathfinder group in Calgary, AB. I am more comfortable as a PC than as a GM, but I would be willing to take a crack at it if need be.

If anyone is available, especially on wednesdays though any time of the week is ok, let me know!

Also, I am into Pathfinder more for the roleplaying than the combat (though combat is awesome too ;)

Hi, I have been looking to get back into Pathfinder as well. I prefer Friday or Saturday nights but could do Wednesday nights depending on location. I prefer being a player as well but have GM'ed in the past. I have a lot of Golarion supplements but just the core rules at the moment.

For sure..Module I2, for levels 5-7, has a +4 defender and a ring of wishes in it

Module -I3 - I5 , also for levels 5- 7, is practically dripping in librams of +1 wizard level book, as well as a +5 shield as a potential reward

Ed Greenwoods Halls of evening star for levels 1 has a luck blade witha wish in it

Module L1 levels 2-4 secret of bone hill I believe has a deck on many things

One thing I hated about 3rd edition was the lost chances for "Lottery" treasure finds.

Nothing like a 2nd level mage running around with a staff of power..unbalanced yes, but good Dms rolled with the punches

sorry, now way off OP

"Neither promotion nor lineage give class levels. I doubt Boromir was born at third level... "

Ok, if we have to nit pick such things, as I guess we need to do such we are talking specifically about levels, then yes lineage would not add to levels. But, in keeping with how ICE trated the Dunedain, they would get significant stat bonuses.

At the very least, using the Azlant stats mods of +2 to every ability, plus age categories as half elfs, but retaining the human bonus feat and skills bonus. Plus as a Noble give him *3 resources per a typical PC of his level..

I am happy to go along with the argument that these guys don't have high levels, but they woudl have kick ass gear.

Case in point, Gandlaf's Glamdring would be a +5 flaming holy orc bane long sword

Anduril is a +5 Holy Keen flaming Bastard sword

Sting is a +3 keen orc bane shortsword

Frodo's mithril shirt is a +4 mithril shirt of medium fortification

I am so 1st edition old school I don't have a problem with a 3rd level halfling rogue walking around with that kind of gear..

I get tired of people putting down Boromir because he was slain by "orcs". He was a great war captain and descended from the Dunedain. In any campain I would run he would be at least a level 10 fighter.

to quote from Fellowship:

"Then Boromir had come leaping through the trees. He had made them fight. He slew many of them and the rest fled. But they had not gone far on the way back when they were attacked again, by a hundred Orcs at least, some of them very large, and they shot a rain of arrows: always at Boromir. Boromir had blown his great horn till the woods rang, and at first the Orcs had been dismayed and had drawn back; but when no answer but the echoes came, they had attacked more fiercely than ever."

And these were not common orcs, but rather Urak-Hai, and he killed many of them. It took over a 100 of them attacking at once to bring him down. The movies shows him slain by 3 arrows, the book notes he was slain by "many" arrows. So I don't buy into the low power rating school. If Boromir can take on over 100 orcs and buy time for Frodo and sam to make a clean getaway, then Aragorn who is much older and seasoned than Boromir, and Gandalf who is a lesser Maiar, have to be of significantly higher level.

Anyone that ever played ICE's middle earth role playing game has come against the whole, Gandalf never threw a fireball in the hobbit when he could have so he was a weakling compared to our characters..It was explained in that setting and I am sure they took this somewhere from Tolkien that both Sauron and the white council were holding back power because they didn't want to act to early and reveal themself. Why else did Sauron pretend to be the Necromancer of Dol Goulder for decades..he was forced to abandon that disguise and declare himself only because the white council finally moved against him, and only did so because Gandalf personally went into southern mirkwood during the Hobbit.

Saraumun was supposed to be the flashier wizard, as befits the "white" title, Gandalf was supposed to be the stealhier wizard, hence the "grey". When Gandalf becomes the "white", the gloves come off and he reveals himself fully to Sauran by breaking saramuns staff.

Anyway, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but my read is that something like the balrog is terrifying and even Aragaon with Anduril in hand would not have faired well against him.

Most Excellent!

So into the "good" part of Season 5, and part of the evidence against the centauri is weapons residue. I am trying to reconcile all the effort the centauri took to hide their actions against that basic identifier..and I conclude that they din't bother using other race's weapons and had always planned to blame it on the narns.

I always got the sense that Dreseden was written as a modern version of the 1930's PI (i.e. Marlow)..so its like he is trying to channel the mood of those novels, which were highly sexist

Now watching season 5...there is a noticeable decline in ..I dunno..watchableness..

I think part of it is that 1-4 built a certain momentum...they had to try and keep it going but the first episodes of season 5 seem disjointed somehow.

Been watching the show all over..seasons 2 to 4 that is:

some things I only really notice now that bug me:

Anna Sheriden allowed to wander into the commanders room while he was sleeping..with no one from security stopping her..

Talia winters gets exposed as a pscyo cop sleeper and takes a shot that almost hits Sheriden..she gets disarmed but later is shown packing her stuff in her quarters with no guards in sight..

I can see how its works for the drama, but suspension of disbelief is more difficult for me now than 20 years ago.

No reason why modern characters can't have magic...what would happen if Harry Dresden got sucked into Golarion when he was just starting outÉ

James, forgive me if you been asked this before, but what do you think of Game of Thrones? Do you watch the show? Have you read any of the books. Is Martin the Tolkien of the 21st century?

This thread got ym to watch 3 episodes from season 3 last night.

Still great:

"You will be Emperor.."

You will also be emperor...why are you laughing?"

"I thought you were joking"

"I never joke about prophecy."

Started reading the entire series again for the third time in preparation of HBO's Season 3. It's amazing how many crackpot theories are out there now as the readership swells.

recently I read on Westros.org that some people thought Podrick Payne might be Aegon..

lol

Which issue and adventure?

Issue #83 of Dragon Magazine..published early 1984 I think..it was one of the first I remember buying.

As dissapointing as Season 5 was compared to 2-4, I still glad they made it.

For that matter, I wish Crusade had stayed longer. I just started to get invested in some of the characters but they only made what 12 epsiodes?

By concidence, I was just watching an episode of Thundaar the barbarian while reading this thread and it hit me..

earth is knocked into an age of darkness by a runaway planet hurtling between the earth and the moon..man's civilization is cast in ruins. Two thousand years later, earth is reborn, a land of savagery, super science and sorcery.

So I guess that where Earthfalls inspiration came from no?

Next campaign I am going to play a Shoanti Barbarian named Thundarr and can't wait to get my brilliant energfy sword and my Mock cohort.

I remember buying dragon #100 as a kid and seeing the adventure was going to London to recover the Mace of st.cuthbert. I did have an odd feeling when reading it, but I have to admit the fish out of water part appealed to me..especially trying to find a coin shop that would buy the pc's strange gold coins and convert that to pounds.

Just have to add my 3 cents:

I really hated all the changes that the forgotten realms went through due to some author writing a novel I never read.

I really value that Paizo limits "official changes".

Haven't seen the new path yet but chomping at the bits to read it based on what I have heard here. In dragon age I was conflicted what to do about Flemeth..

Baba Yaga..well not so conflicted but I doubt even 17th level characters would have a chance to take her down.

This thread reminds me about running the barrier peaks back in 1982. Mind you, we were a bunch of 12 year old kids and things tended to get silly, but memories of scouring the spaceship for all the laser guns and grenades we could find, and then launching a coup in Greyhawk city with those weapons by hiring a team of of halfling commandos. It all went swingingly until the grenades ran out..

Making the main villian appear in some early is always good. But I think for me the more important thing is for later adventures to reflect actions in previous adventures.

For example, in Mass Effect and Dragon age sequels, what transpired in the past in the original game is carried over into the new game. It gives continuity. It would take too much space in an adventure to incorporate a lot of previous encounter outcomes into following adventures (and the range of possible player decisions), but including some simple binary choices works. I.E (Trinia handed over to guard, Trinia taken by PC's to Vencarlo for hiding). In my opinion, adventure paths are largely made or broken by the starting adventure. It "sets the table". It is the origin story, where motivations are formed. It has to have a lot of seeds, some will never amount to anything, but there should be enough so that authors of later adventures can pick and choose what they want to enhance. There is the ability to do this in adventure 2 or 3, but beyond that the characters get into the meet of the tale and those original story seeds should already have some meaning.

I think in that respect, CotCT set a good table, so did legacy of fire, and serpents skull, and Shattered Star. But Of those, only CotCT and Shattered star really carried the flavour throughout. I think Legacy of fire wasted a brilliant opening chapter and so did serpents skull. And second darkness..ugh..it's like going to an Italian restuarant and after minestone soup for an appetizer being served burritos for a main course and black forest cake for dessert.

I've been a loyal supporter of Paizo from day one, and in general really like the adventure paths. Compared to the incoherent original Shackled City path (which Paizo much impoved via hardcover), Paizo's paths are usually quite dependable in storytelling.

Where they failed for me was:

Council of Thieves (love 2-4), hate 1,5-6, the style differnces just did not work, and I just couldn't get myself to ever run it despite reading each adventure a few times to see if I was missing something.

Carrion Crown..while each module is good (especially 1-4), it really feels like you are railroading the players to chase after the plot, and they never have any real stake in what is going on. At no point during most of the adventure do they know or care about the main villain, and what he is up to is not hinted at all. I mean, a simple omen by a local fortune teller in the first adventure might have sufficed.It just felt like 6 different horror adventures slapped together.

Second Darkness..its been said a million times before..theere is a huge disconnect between the early adventures and the latter ones. Why does my Riddleport Mercenary give a crap about helping some uptight elves?

The best Adventure Path in my opinion was curse of the Crimson Throne..even the sidetreck in 4-5 has a plausible rationale (the city is not a safe place for you to be, come back when they think you are dead or not coming back). I also think the repackaged Runelords is great, and Shattered Star does an excellent job keeping coherence. Brandon Hodge did a really good job refering to incidents in previous adventures and their consequences in the final adventure. That is good stuff. That Parrot you saved as a level 1 rookie. Well it just turns out that with the right codeword it will repeat the location of a buried treasure that contains part of artifact that will help you in adventure 5 or 6.

If Paizo did have a 1 author adventure path. I suggest Eric Mona do it. It doesn't seem like he is that busy and the last 2 adventures he did have been two of my all time favorite adventures. whispering Cairn is next to Hommelet in my pantheon, so get Eric out of the hot tub and give him a pen and some paper.

gang wrote:

Will we get an NPC write-up or at least a statblock for Sir Canayven as well?

Probably not in this adventure path.

After reading this read I am glad I wasn't imagininging things. I went back to seekers of secrets and Sir Canayven is listed as aristocrat 3/rogue 3..it didn't seem to give with his history of jungle adventures..

so the ranger works better..but then I kept thinking he was only ranger 6 instead of range 8..and its because Seekers of secrets has him at 6th level..argh..

Should I hang on to Seekers as a collectible? Is paizo quietly buying them back?

I really like how the adventure incorporates possible character events from the previous adventures in the series. One constant criticism of adventure paths is how the authours don't incorporate points of interest from earlier parts of the path, but clearly this adventure does.

I usually find the final adventure of the path to be the weakest of the 6 (I'm looking at you council of thieves), but in this case I am really liking it. In fact, I don't think Shattered Star has had a weak adventure, but if I had to name one it certainly wouldn't be the Dead Heart.

Ah OK. I think my main mistake was in misremembering just HOW mad Hialin was in Second Darkness, upon reading it again he is a LOT of corrupt than I gave him credit for.

I was also wondering, is it possible for a drow to transform back into an elf by being extraordinarily good/pure? If so I guess this would be significantly more rare though since I doubt there are as many good/neutral drow as there are evil/neutral elves...

LOl..I wonder how that idea would play out for a certain FR scimitar wielding drow

As much as I love Paizo products, finances have become too tight with a new house and baby on the way. Thanks.

Star Wars
Empire
Jedi

After reading the thread, I had a thought; why must all adevnture paths adhere to a 6 book format? I know it makes the planning process simplier to standardise production scheduling, but seriously, some stories need more space than others to be told.

This would create a situation where one path might take characters from 1 to 10 in four books, while another would take them to 1 to 20 in eight books.

One thing that really stands out for me is that sometimes the "modules" seem to need to accelerate leveling to get the characters where they need to be for the next chapter. So you have some AP's where there are sequnces of fighting mobs that have little to do with improving the narrative but rather just provide repetive encounters to boost xp.

Kingmaker didn't seem to have this problem because you were not forced to go and kill everything on the map, but some like the Serpents Skull, yeah, just seems like a lot of mobs with no real story added value and no interesting treasure to boot.

My favorite was intially Bran..gotta root for the little guy!

but as series went on I found I switched to more unusual characters..

for example, Samwell Tarly..Or the onion smuggler..

But of course my favorite now is Tyrion..the man's ability to survive is amazing.

George's editor holding the manuscript for A Dance with Dragons.

That's pretty big. And the hardcover should be about half as thick, considering the MS is single-paged. That's still massive.

The trully funny thing is if he was a beginning writer no editor would ever read through that.

I guess the key is write short stories or very short novels that can be made into trilogies..and then when the houses know your stuff, you can indulge yourself.

Sorry, must be channelling memories of Goodkind. I know that every page of that stack is going to be the best thing I have read in 5 years.

Ok, seems a bit of froth of negativity on this, while I can sorta understand the impetus of it, I think its kinda getting out of hand. Dragon Age 2 is a good game.

Is it as good as DA1..it really depends on what you like your game to be. My first impression was that EA and bioware had "consoled" the thing, dumbing it down and eliminating a lot of goodness that makes a killer RPG. So no, it is not a sequel to DA1.

What it is a another game entirely set in the dragon age universe. If you liked Mass effect 2, and I assuming most here did, then you should find DA 2 enjoyable. Yeah, I am wondering why they nerfed NPC armor options. I suspect it is because of all the graphics required and yea, EA wanted to pump this out. DA 1 took 5, I repeat 5, years to make. It would be unreasonable to expect the same depth in a sequel out in year and a bit. Would I have waited for a deeper game, yeah, since I am still mucking around with doing all the possible combos in DA1 and could have waited another year.

But EA and Bioware likely felt that they needed to be more aggresive in feeding the masses, and so we have DA 2. The game looks gorgeous and the story seems interesting. Yeah, they should have done more original tiles, but for the hand wringing about how Bioware has changed, I seem to remember Neverwinter Nights having scores of repetitive looking dungeons.Even the 3 official additional modules suffered from that.

As for the premium DLC content, I agree its a bit in your face. Then again, wardens peak was premium content available right when DA1 came out, so why is DA2 being picked on for that.

In short, played about 20 hours of DA2 and enjoying it. The gorgeous graphics and the story are so far overridding any dissapointment with the fact that gameplay has been dumbed down.

Thanks great clips!

When people say the start is a little rough, they mean the entirety of GARDENS OF THE MOON, to the point where some people hate it, try DEADHOUSE GATES (the second book, set on a different continent with a new cast) instead and love it.

I really like GotM, far moreso than most. It's a crazy high-level D&D campaign where the DM has drunk way too much before playing but still just about keeps it together. It doesn't make much sense but the ride is worth it :-)

As for Esslemont, NIGHT OF KNIVES was the very first MALAZAN novel ever written, back around 1987-88, before GARDENS OF THE MOON was written in 1991 (Erikson then got a deal and started writing DEADHOUSE GATES - after losing his original sequel, the first version of MEMORIES OF ICE - in a hard drive crash, in 1998). So it's pretty rough going, and I don't think ICE did a lot to it when he published it in 2004. His second book is a lot better and the third a vast improvement over that.

Night of knives does read somewhat amateurish, but The Crimson Guard is top notch, so can't say Esslemont has no skill. I have read a lot of fantasy, so I didn't find Gardens of the Moon too hard to get through, no worse than trying to suffer through Goodkinds political diatribes for the 100th time in his later books. In fact, some parts of Gardens of the moon are pure brilliance, i.e. Hedge and the deck of Dragons, Kruppe's dreams, the assasin war in Darujistan..

Don't mess with Genoes Paran..

just saying

I must confess I stopped going to GRRM's blog because he hadn't been giving any updates..

now to give a July date...well,thrilled of course but nervous about what would happen if it gets delayed again..

1. CotCT
2. KM
3. LoF
4. RotRL
5. SS
6. CoT
7. SD

In the case of CoT it is a 6 adventure package dealing with the exploration of Cheliax as much as it is about the plot it is working towards, I am actually fine with that, it is in part how you represent it as a DM I guess.

I own CoT but had never read through them as took a one year hiatus from gaming. Anyway, after reading all about it on the boards I scanned through them last weekend. My impresion was that the 1st book was a little weak, the 2-5 got quite good and book 6 felt totally flat to me due to the sandox nature of it.

Which is interesting, because I really like Kingmaker (agree that book 6 feels out of place somewhat).

I guess what I am saying is that a railroad plot driven path if done well is a joy to run, and a sandbox adventure that has a few strong overriding narrative plots can be a joy to run.

But a railroad adventure path that throws in too much sandbox, especially at the start or end, is gonna being dissapointing.

I was all set to run CoT until I read book 6..I would need to do serious work as the conclusion just feels way to wishy washy.

Changes is a great example of where an author realizes that the schtick is getting tired and needs to be revamped.

Most authors screw this up..

But Jim Butcher blows it away..by far the best "lets turn this world upside down" novel I have ever ready in a continuing series.

The best part of it is that everything that happens is a logical culmination of what has run before..its not like he decided to open some logic holes the size of a death star to ram the story down our throats.

That is what I like best about Butcher..the stort elements are high fantasy but there is an underlying consistency to the narrative.

Black Dougal wrote:

All this number crunching about chandalier swinging is all well and good, but I think you guys are missing the essential element of fantasy story telling here..DM fiat..

By Jimminy, if Timmy the kicthen boy with a bad knee and 6 strength needs to to make a DC 41 to succesfully swing on the freaking chandalier to escape the Nycaloth that charged in from the stables, wll guess what Tymora is in a wierd moood and someone just got a +39 luck mod..just don't roll a one Timmy

And you say that it should always be this way? Why do we need any rules then? There is a game and just telling a story. The game adds mechanics into the storytelling. If we were ignoring it, we wouldn't have to have 6 strength, 41 DC or +39 luck modifier at all.

By all means, the rules provide context, and by tried and true play testing are usually codified to represent balance. But in debating the merits of the Forgotten Realms under 3.5 vs 4th edition rules, I think the thread has veered way too much into the nitty gritty. My feeling is that the original Realms had a unique flavour because it was created by one guy over many years. As it went through various iterations and more hands became involved, the flavour changed - too many cooks as it were. And that is where I think 4th ed FR feel flat, it had just changed too muc and there was no real passion in the creation/recreation.

Basically, I bought the FR products for the sandbox, not so much for the mechanics. Yeah, I prefer 1st and 2nd edition over 3.5 and 4th. But not to knock the overall debate. You guys amaze me with your debating skills.

Shes 'bankable', but not for portraying a very believeable character :p

I just think we will get another helping of sub-par genre content which will be cheezy and made for its eye candy value, and all that will happen is that the genre will reinforce itself as something not to be taken seriously and continue on as a bit of a sad joke. I'd prefer to see something with teeth as opposed to something so horrible I just can't watch... which I suspect this will fall into.

For every Conan there were five 'Barbarian Brothers meet Ator the fighting Eagle', but now we don't even get the rare 'Conan' gem.

Horrible cheeze out there, just horrible.

I feel your pain, I remember seeing Ator 25 years ago and I still have nightmares..hangliders and grenades..argh!