Brent Stroh's page

October (139) - "Maure Castle: The Greater Halls" by Robert J. Kuntz. Close on its tail is "There is No Honor" by James Jacobs, which was a very smartly constructed first level adventure. The backdrop for Sasserine was also excellent. Overall a very strong issue.

I feel like I'm in a pretty small minority from what I've seen on the boards, but I really don't get the Maure Castle installments.

They just seem like D&D versions of old text adventure games on my Apple //e. "If you dip your left hand in this water, and 13 rooms later happen to stick your foot into the puddle..."

And of course, everyone fills their living space with dozens of lethal traps. Guess the Maures didn't entertain much - a BBQ wouldn't leave many survivors. :)

Judging from the response to the adventures, though, I think I'll be seeing them in the magazine for years to come. However, since I'm the universal arbiter of good taste...

Yeah, right. Anyway, to move back toward the topic at hand, I agree with the sentiment that 2006 was a very strong year for Dungeon.

Silicon Sorcery is by commission only. It's also probably dead, but you never know—we might decide to resurrect it. Of course, I might win the lottery, as well.

Now that's good news.

I just re-upped for Dungeon and Dragon at 3 years each not too long ago, primarily because I want to support what Paizo is doing with the adventure paths.

I've never particularly enjoyed the treatments of novels or video games in Dragon. I don't play enough video games to have any familiarity with what's being converted, and generally characters from novels don't work well outside the context of their own story/world.

Although I'm a subscriber (and will be for a while), I find myself flipping through each Dragon for a few minutes the day I receive it, and adding it to my collection - I'm much more interested in Dungeon each month.

Scale Mail & Class Acts I tend to read; much of the rest gets skimmed over or skipped entirely.

The problem is that I don't have any constructive suggestions on how to make the magazine more appealing to me.

Thank you Fake Healer for supporting my thoughts. You know, a large scale wilderness war (if we must use the war theme) complete with fey, druids, rangers, treants, and so on could be very unique, interesting, imaginative, and full of epic legends, magic, mystery, intrigue, and so forth. And dense woods always have opportunities for forgotten castles, underground caverns, haunted woods, etc. Anyway, I think it would be cool...anyone else?

The thing that concerns me with a war theme is that by nature, it should be open and provide a lot of choices. Do we raid the enemy supply chain, reinforce the border, or try to break the seige at Fort Whatever? By its nature, Dungeon isn't the place for an almost free-form plot.

The way around this would seem to require the PCs to be taking orders from someone, rather than making their own decisions. That might work at 2nd level, but not so well at 12th. That's one thing AoW did a good job with - motivating the characters without a lot of ordering around.

The 'carve a kingdom from the wilderness' idea seems to have the same problem - it's too open. Some of the other ideas have the opposite problem - too restrictive. 'Let's all be orcs' is on that list, I'm afraid.

James & Co. do a good job of walking the line between railroad and wide open every month; I'm sure that one of the biggest problems with the overall plot of an adventure path involves this balancing act. As 1/3 of the value of the magazine (at least adventure-wise; I'm not about to start assigning fractions to comics and Class Acts...) the adventure paths have to have broad appeal, and remain flexible enough to drop into nearly any existing world.

The PCs disguised themselves as Lotus Dragons with tattoos, entered the hideout through the taxidermist shop after a short battle with lookouts/snipers perched on rooftops, and made their way straight to Rowen's room without alerting anyone in the complex. I tried to get Rowen to make her escape as soon as battle erupted but failed. The PCs killed her. The female swashbuckler PC had the rogue PC disguise her as Rowen so they could make it out safely with Rowen's body and loot stuffed in a wardrobe. I should have pulled a "DM cheat roll" on the PC's bluff attempts on the few Lotus Dragons they encountered on the way out but I thought the PCs plan was just incredible and figured I could fix things later. They told the Lotus Dragons they encountered on the way out that if Vanthus returns, kill him because he is trying to kill Rowen and that they're taking Rowen and some of her stuff to a safehouse.

The PCs may have been able to disguise themselves as Lotus Dragons from a distance, but as I recall, there are only a couple of dozen Lotus Dragons, and they all live together. Having strangers with tattoos show up would be sort of like dropping 4-5 new kids into a second grade class all on the same day. They're the right size and shape, but no one knows who they are.

I'm sure that the remaining Lotus Dragons are clever enough to put 2 and 2 together - dead snipers/lookouts, people we've never seen before, Rowyn missing - and start asking some questions.

By the time the PCs return, it's entirely possible that the Lotus Dragons have already sprung Rowyn, even before the bullywugs arrive. Admittedly, though, the idea of a 3-sided running battle through the manor would be cool.

I'd make the call based on challenge and loot level; if the party is above grade on wealth, the Lotus Dragons could rescue Rowyn and reclaim any money and items the party left at the manor. If they're doing well tactically, having some Lotus Dragons added to the mix during the manor fight could certainly add some additional challenge.

This thread brings to mind the discussion a while back about what people liked/disliked about dungeon crawls, and the discussion about Seige of the Spider Eaters.

I'm a member of the small dungeon camp; very little is more dull than 4 sessions of "kick in the door, kill what moves, search"...

And while a Dungeon adventure can't, by nature, tailor role playing encounters to the party, Seige did a good job of expanding the adventure to include role playing opportunities and some moral decision making.

I'm not currently running Savage Tide, but after reading the first two adventures, I'd like to. Both feature a number of locales, which gives different characters a chance in the spotlight. The change of scenery also keeps the adventures fresh.

Based on the first two Savage Tide adventures, I'd say it's pretty obvious that James & Co. are asking questions on these boards and paying attention to the answers.

And I should also say that I didn't hate the other two adventures in the most recent issue; they just didn't capture my attention like The Bullywug Gambit.

It's just text. I run multimillion dollar sites so give me a break. If you are honestly trying to be sarcastic here, please try harder.

Could you post a couple of URLs for these multimillion dollar sites that you run without any graphic designers, people to do content layout, images, etc?

I've seen a number of posts praising the Paizo crew for the evolving format of Dungeon over the past few years. Given the attention they're paying to getting the magazine "just right," I'm not surprised that they want to produce the web supplements to the same level of excellence.

And I concur with the others; your tone doesn't come off as constructive criticism at all. It's complaining, repetitively, as far as I can tell.

You might want to review what you paid for with your subscription: http://paizo.com/dungeon Not a mention of any web supplements at all. You can call them part of the adventure path or part of the adventure if you like, but I'll point out that the first 100+ issues of Dungeon had adventures that worked just fine without additional information. The web material is being provided, free of charge. I'd assume they're actually paying the authors of the conversions, and the people involved in preparing the downloads are taking time away from what they're actually being paid to produce.

The minute you're paying $24.95 a year for web supplements, I'll fully support your right to complain as much as you want when they're late.

Will we see a Forgotten Realms Adventure Path anytime soon?

Hope not.

For something that's essentially 1/3 of my annual subscription, I'd prefer that it remain non-world specific. And that's speaking as someone who has been running/playing in Eberron for a few years.

The shorter 3 adventure arcs have been world-specific in the past, which I don't have a problem with. 3 adventures of 36 is a lot less "useless" material than 12/36. And yeah, "useless" is more a perception than the reality, but it's always easier to add world details and proper nouns than it is to remove them, and it increases the overall utility of the adventures.

I mean I'd certainly buy a hardcover now (provided it added new value over the current magazines). But once I'm done with the campaign, it seems kinda hard to justify spending $60+ dollars on a book I won't be using for just nostalgia sake. If I'm done with the campaign, you don't have anything to offer me even if you add in new material.

I suspect that the number of people currently playing AoW is probably not a majority of current Dungeon subscribers, let alone current D&D players. The hardcover market is for the subscribers who have AoW queued up behind SCAP, or for non-subscribers who have been hearing about it on various gaming messageboards for a year now. GMs with multiple groups or plans to rerun the path in the future fall in there somewhere, as well.

I also have to say the ammount of books coming out is getting out of hand. I can't keep track of all the feats and prestige classes my players are finding. I'm thinking of limiting my players to the core books, but the players spend money on this stuff, so I feel bad about restricting their options.

I wouldn't feel bad about it. Before starting off our last campaign, everyone pretty much agreed on core, Eberron, and Complete. Everything else is subject to review and/or approval, which is usually done on a tentative basis - if something seems overwhelming, it's eventually removed or replaced.

Having said that, I don't think we've got a lot of powergaming going on at the table. Everyone wants to be effective, but we haven't seen any of the 3 core class, 14 prestige class combos typically seen on the WotC CO board. :) A lot of the oddball stuff is added more for flavor than for power.

Well, I certainly can't argue costs with you as I don't have the numbers and you do, but I don't think it would be as detrimental as you might. Unlike the other mags you mentioned this would have an existing base to pull from...

I suspect many of us enjoy the excellent quality of Dungeon; however, I've been a subscriber for years, and I've only run a handful of the adventures - lack of time to run games at all, mainly.

Separating into a second magazine would simply give me twice as many adventures that I don't have time to run. :) If I were betting, I'd say Dungeon typically serves up a lot more game time per month than the majority of readers actually have.

Delericho wrote:

And Paizo would presumably not be losing out, since I would still be buying every issue anyway.

For what it's worth, it probably is kind of a wash to us.

-Vic.
.

At a more conceptual level, though, a significant change in the number of subscribers would probably affect the advertising rate, though, wouldn't it? Of course a single subscription won't turn the tide, but if enough one-off purchasers would subscribe...

To DMs and players alike, please share your thoughts on "Siege of the Spider Eaters". I'm hungry for feedback good or bad. But no spoilers please.

Just got this today. This adventure really grabbed me, for exactly the reasons others have indicated already. The lack of black and white NPCs, and the way the adventure goals are entirely PC driven was an approach that really impressed me.

Although published adventures have to have a certain railroad quality in order to fit in a defined word count, this adventure comes very close to the ideal - put the PCs in a situation, and turn 'em loose. In this adventure, choices have a strong effect on the outcome/goals.

I've been known to skim through an issue of Dungeon in 20 minutes and file it away in the closet. This adventure had me reading every word. More importantly, it made me want to run it.

There are a number of authors who produce consistently excellent work - I don't think anyone would be surprised if I included Vaughn, Pett, and Logue on this list. As far as I'm concerned, your adventure belongs in this group.

Congratulations! When should we expect another one? :)

Are DM's justified in making all their rolls (and in some cases, some of the players) behind a screen? Do I just need to (nicely) remind players that the DM's rulings are final?

Absolutely. I use DM's Familiar when I'm running, and I've got the PCs basic stats - AC, opposed skills, etc - in the system. That way, I can do basic opposed checks - Spot, Listen - without triggering the "I think I just missed something important" syndrome.

Frankly, a guy demanding to see the dice isn't really accomplishing much. It's not like he's got the monster stat block in front of him, so he doesn't know if you're adding +4 or +37 to the roll...

1)the warlock being in some peoples' opinion a tad imbalanced

I'm currently playing a Rogue1/Warlock10, and I don't really think it's been especially game breaking. Yeah, due to the ranged touch thing, I rarely miss. Thanks to a chasuble of fell power, I do some extra dice of damage. However, it's once per round, since it doesn't benefit from iterative attacks. Our fire-based sorceror with scorching ray, or our rapid shot ranger both outclass my warlock, damage-wise. Part of this is probably related to the laws of probability giving them all of my critical hits, but I digress.

The limited number of invocations makes the warlock extremely focused; it doesn't help that I brought him into the game at 6th level when I ran out of time to continue GMing - my invocation selections didn't turn out to be as effective as they could have been.

However, being able to detect magic constantly, and being able to fly offer some interesting tactical options. Dispelling until the bad guy stops glowing, or just staying out of the way of most melee encounters has a habit of keeping him in pretty good health.

But, I don't feel like my character is any more powerful than anyone else's at the table.

Not everyone can afford using miniatures in their games. The things tend to run in the $4-6 range for one or two minis -- unpainted. Paint isn't exactly free, and some people just don't have the patience or dexterity to do even a passable job at painting them.

True. I've used the old Dungeon monster token sheets and a bag of fender washers to make double sided monster tokens. During a session, I use a set of magnetic bases from Alea Tools with Post-it flags on 'em so I can tell bad guy #3 from bad guy #5 when marking off HP in DM's Familiar.

Making them double-sided saves $ on the washers, and the magnetic bases still work fine. Plus, they're easy to carry around in small plastic tackle box thingies from Wal-Mart.

A bit more durable, at any rate.

I would just like to stand up for all of the Eberron DM's who are not Takasi and say that we are just like the rest of you. We do our own legwork and do not start silly threads about magazine content because we are too lazy to actually DM.

Ditto. I actually tried reading over Takasi's arguments at ENWorld, WotC, and here, and I'm still not convinced (like nearly everyone else) that the argument holds any water.

I don't consider making a generic adventure into an Eberron adventure just by swapping proper nouns to be worth the effort. If the adventure does not incorporate the distinctive elements that make Eberron into Eberron, there's no point in making it difficult for the majority of people who use the baseline setting or a homebrew.

I'm fully qualified to swap my own nouns, thanks.

I e-mail the players between sessions to make sure I know what their choices for a direction to the next session are. If they still turn "left" then I have to make it up as I go along, but I usually have a subplot or three on reserve that I can spring on them if they don't follow the pre-destined path.

We tend to do something similar - in general, we wrap up an adventure near the end of the session anyway. The last 20 minutes are spent on XP, plans to level up, and OOC discussion of what's next. Once the players all gravitate toward a particular plan, the GM has a decent starting point on what to think about for next time.

Ah. So in other words, it is inevitable that a prewritten adventure will have a limited number of paths, but the players won't mind if you set them paths they like?

Maybe this is just me and the group I play with, but there's something of an unspoken agreement - the GM tries to provide hooks for the players, and the players try to find a way to to make the hooks work.

Frankly, I've got very limited time for gaming - we play every 2 weeks, for an afternoon, and several of the other folks are in the same boat. I'd rather play the well-planned, thought out scenario, even if my character's reason for doing so is a bit shaky, rather than spending an afternoon on the wandering damage table.

I'll cut the GM some slack, primarily because he's currently spending a lot more of his downtime between sessions working on the game.

The problem is that Dragon is designed for players. I like the idea of my players buying a supplement where they can get new prestige classes, feats, ideas/strategies ect.

Guess we'll have to agree to see this differently. I don't allow prestige classes, feats, etc, without my approval either, but my players are welcome to browse around and see what's available. I don't really see a magic shop as being any different - I'd probably consider the players aware of the shop via gather info or reputation, call it a timesaver for me, and move on.

Is the theory that they are going to say, "Hey I heard Manzorian/Tenser" has a fountain? What if I dont buy Dragon? What am I going to say, "yeah.... uh... what fountain are you talking about?" What if I make some magic item shops in greyhawk, can my players say "well dragon says we can get everything we want from "Maldin's"... This kind of move almost makes me want to request that my players not purchase Dragon.

In general, when I'm running a game, I control the world, not the players. In the same way I don't allow races and classes I'm not familiar with, I wouldn't allow a player to invent "Bob's Magic Stuff for Free" either.

If you don't want to buy Dragon, that's great. Don't use the resources in Dragon. Tell your players you don't purchase the mag, so they shouldn't count on what they read there being true.

Not sure I see the problem, here...

It's not an error... the building was built by humans, not for the new residents. They'll need to take care on the stairs and squeeze to get around in the rooms, but it's all for three square meals and a place to sleep so I'm sure they won't mind.

This is one of several times I've found myself really agreeing with your approach. Another one recently was the high level adventures thread - let the PCs use their toys.

I may have to give this adventure a second look. When I noticed that a major adversary's name was spelled two different ways on the back cover, I figured it didn't bode well for the editing process. :)

While we're on the topic, I'd like to see a settings 2-page article format for the magazine the same way we have Critical Threats.

The format would need to include suggestions on how to use the setting, with possible plot threads and ways to drop it into a campaign, the same way critical threats have a Development column and are required to have suggestions for fitting the NPC into the campaign. Each article would cover just a single scene: a tavern, a woodland shrine, a country manor, etc.

Now that would be cool. I'd imagine finding an extra two pages could be tricky, though. :) That's definitely CityBook drop-in type material.

Looks like I'm not alone. :)

I'm reminded of the Flying Buffalo CityBook series - the books outlined a number of businesses that could be dropped into a city with minimal work.

I'd see Backdrops as something similar - cities, villages, districts, whatever, that could be dropped into existing campaigns.

Some ideas off the top of my head...

An underground dwarven settlement/mine, possibly with a recently cut entrance to an Underdark cavern

A nomadic halfling caravan

An elven settlement between the elven forests and encroaching humans

A fallen high-class district in a large city, now largely controlled by organized crime

An actual high-class district in a large city, including brief profiles of the major noble families

An island chain used as a stopover/resupply point by ocean-going merchants

Maybe a combination book including a few small villages - a farming village, a mining camp, a lumber town...

I think the key for success with something like this is to avoid any world-specific stuff; no warforged settlements in the Mournland, for example. Also, avoiding any sort of metaplot is important, at least to me - the books should be self-contained. I'd be more interested in seeing described NPCs than stat-blocks - "Tarl is a successful merchant, skilled at driving a hard bargain (Cha 16, Diplomacy 9 ranks)" - since that will save a lot of space. Plus, most NPCs aren't combat-fodder anyway.

I think it would be great to be able to leverage this sort of background when writing adventures for Dungeon.

This came up in a thread on the AoW forum; since my reply was off-topic over there, and somewhat lost in the real topic of the thread, I thought it might be useful to get more opinions on it here in General Discussion.

A dream situation would be not just to do a hardcover, but to do whole books based on the key locations (Diamond Lake, Free City, Alhaster) and fill them with lots of advice on how to keep the PCs on track and what to do when they wander off it. That's a lot to hope for, though, so it's almost not worth considering.

Hmm. This actually sounds pretty cool. I can't be the only GM who finds a lot of campaign worlds over-developed to the point of paralysis. I have no interest in running a Forgotten Realms campaign because of the sheer amount of canon, for example. (Yeah, I'm anal. Moving on...)

How about the Paizo Publishing Backdrop series - an ongoing series of 64/96 page softcovers that focus on creating a believable, fleshed out, specific place for a campaign? Include the major NPCs, and a handful of adventure hooks, but not necessarily any large-scale plots - this would be a supplement, rather than an adventure module.

The Styes, Diamond Lake, Alhaster - the first three entries in the series are already half-written.

As another fringe benefit to this, future Dungeon adventures could be set in these backdrop locations. Obviously, some amount of background would have to be included in the magazine for those who don't have the backdrop book, but for those who do, the adventure becomes deeper/more interesting, without increasing the magazine page count or the adventure size.

Just a thought.

Tangentially, it might be useful in the future to divide backdrops into player/GM sections; for something like AoW, where the PCs are ideally from Diamond Lake, it would be great to hand the players 5-6 pages of information they could use when developing their backgrounds.

A dream situation would be not just to do a hardcover, but to do whole books based on the key locations (Diamond Lake, Free City, Alhaster) and fill them with lots of advice on how to keep the PCs on track and what to do when they wander off it. That's a lot to hope for, though, so it's almost not worth considering.

Hmm. This actually sounds pretty cool. I can't be the only GM who finds a lot of campaign worlds over-developed to the point of paralysis. I have no interest in running a Forgotten Realms campaign because of the sheer amount of canon, for example. (Yeah, I'm anal. Moving on...)

How about the Paizo Publishing Backdrop series - an ongoing series of 64/96 page softcovers that focus on creating a believable, fleshed out, specific place for a campaign? Include the major NPCs, and a handful of adventure hooks, but not necessarily any large-scale plots - this would be a supplement, rather than an adventure module.

The Styes, Diamond Lake, Alhaster - the first three entries in the series are already half-written.

As another fringe benefit to this, future Dungeon adventures could be set in these backdrop locations. Obviously, some amount of background would have to be included in the magazine for those who don't have the backdrop book, but for those who do, the adventure becomes deeper/more interesting, without increasing the magazine page count or the adventure size.

Just a thought.

I've got copiers at my office that can scan whatever I can fit on the glass and make a PDF out of it. Between that and the document feeder, I've been able to cut the binding from a spare copy of the magazine, drop it on the copier, and hit go.

The downside is the size limit on the email system; I can't do large chunks at a time, so some assembly is still required once I get my PDFs in my Inbox.

I don't have a spare copy of #84 to do, unfortunately, but you might see if Kinkos or one of your players might have access to such a thing.

the Half Orc players is JONESING for a fight because he's 30 xp from level 2....he goes to the Feral Dog and tells the bartender "Your beer sucks!" The replacment paladin 'just happened' to be in the bar, and the two clerics of Wee-Jas and the Ninja come in right at the start of trouble (they didn't even rest after the arse-beating in the Cairn)

I don't think you're a mean GM - I think your players apparently have suicidal characters. :)

I've got a fairly explicit metagame agreement with my players. The main mission objectives will be more or less level-appropriate. Any random encounters along the way are just that. The dragon's lair doesn't turn into a kobold lemonade stand just because you're 2nd level, after all. And, if the characters go out of their way to look for trouble, it will probably find them.

I don't pull punches (although I will nudge a die here and there for purposes of drama) and I think the players appreciate their victories that much more because of it.

I've seen the posts about the license; while I understand it, I have to say that I hope this point comes up for renegotiation next time you renew your contract. :)

Copying blocks of text is handy. Plus, it's easier to use at "work."

I'm giving some thought to running Age of Worms as a PbP game. Having the adventure path issues in PDF would be great, because I could cut and paste some of the background and descriptive text about things the characters know directly into the game archives.

Of course, that's exactly what makes Paizo leery of doing it; that and peer to peer file sharing... :)

As it stands, I can always purchase a second copy, get Kinko's to cut the binding off, and run it through the scanner at work. It will email me a PDF. Then, I can OCR it and edit the result...

Yeah, a couple bucks for a PDF on top of my magazine is looking really good right now, between the $10 and unknown hours the alternative would take...

Another line that is far too frequently used in adventures is "They will fight to the death". I miss having a "morale system" to determine when enemies break and run, but intelligent enemies must have a motivation. Throwing away their life is unlikely to be sufficent for them. Perhaps if they're members of a religious order that believe death through battle is glorious, but if they're defending their women and children in the next room, eventually someone might try to arrange a peaceful surrender.

Couldn't agree more. To be fair, though, this happens in everyone's adventures, not just Dungeon. In the Eberron series of modules, each one basically indicates, "We're on the last page, so the monsters fight to the death."

I'd imagine this is the case because Dungeon adventures need to be largely self-contained. Players want a feeling of closure and accomplishment.

Plus, as a GM, it's easy enough to flip the switch the other way. In two of the three Eberron adventures, for example, the adversaries surrendered or escaped in my game. One may become a future ally, while the other is certainly going to renew his antagonistic relationship with the PCs.

But, that's easy for me to do in part of a long-running game, vs. the author of a standalone scenario.

>> PS: At some point in the future, when I'm no
>> longer on the staff, I will inundate Dungeon
>> with adventure proposals, but that day is not
>> today.

Is this a policy change from the Chris Perkins days? :)

And it's not that his stuff was BAD; it just seemed weird that he wrote half the magazine.

My players cleaned out the Lucky Monkey and even though about half of the thugs ran away, they still ended up with 3,000+gp worth of gear.

I don't recall the specifics of the adventure you're running, but a few things come to mind.

- If every thug on the street is toting a masterwork blade, they apparently aren't worth much new, let alone as resale/plunder.

- Are they really masterwork? Unless your PCs have some skill at appraisal or smithing, who says the weapons are? You can fudge out the bonus during combat, and just ignore them. Sounds like your players aren't really being threatened much in the fight, so +/- a point here and there isn't a big deal.

- Or, make the economy a lot less whacked out. "I'd really like to take those off your hands, but I still haven't been able to sell the ones you brought in last week." Points to weapons rack. "If you're interested, I'll give you 400 gp for the lot, but I can't tie any more funds up in inventory until these start to move."

Any chance we'll see a sheet of monster tokens to go along with the upcoming Eberron adventures?

Most of the monsters/creatures overlap with the standard D&D game, and the existing token sets are fine for that, but I'd really like to find some good warforged and Emerald Claw tokens.

Some of the forum avatar images are close to 1" in size, but that's technically a copyright violation.