David Roulston's page

I would like to make cheerful notice of the recent delivery of Pahtfinder #16.

However, as of yet I have not received Pathfinder #15.

Should I continue to wait for it, or is it time to mail me out a replacement copy?

I don't suppose there's any way those of us still running AOW or ST campaigns can be included in the society?

In any case, most of my group is coming to Gen Con this year and are all jazzed as we're all signed up to play in all the Pathfinder games.

Ah, well....I guess I have to give the scanner a workout when I get to that point. Given that we're just finishing up Blackwall Keep, it'll be many years before I'll need to do that.

Thanks for responding thoguh.

Thanks James. It's great the way you guys keep tabs on the boards.

I went back into the mags and found the Muddle in the following issue of Dungeon. I had been looking for it in Dragon, erroneously thinking it was a Wormfood article. The map was among the PDFs I had already downloaded, so I'm all set up.

I had previously downloaded all the online supplements for AOW, but had not yet done so for Savage Tide. This was something I decided to correct.

I had no problem until I got to issue #144. It wasn't among the list available along with #139-143. After some searching I was eventually able to find it, as well as the online supplements to #145-147. (You may want to get #144-147 listed on the same page with the rest.)

However, no supplements for #148-150, I understand. Is there any possibility whatsoever that these will ever be available?

Well, more searching yirlded me supplements to #145-147. But from what I've read, there'll be no love for #148-150. Has there been any change (he asked hopefully)?

I've searched the archives, and I don't know if this has been ultimately addressed. Will we every see the online supplements for Dungeons #145--#150?

I am prepping for HoHR, and I realized that I didn't have a map for Midnight's Muddle beyond the one printed in the magazine. I figured I would just download the web supplement for Dragon Dragon #336 on the Paizo website--but I couldn't find it.

Did it ever exist? Have all the web supplements for Dragon and Dungeon been taken off the site?

I downloaded all of the web supplements for AOW months ago, but I never got around to doing the same for The Savage Tide.

Am I SOL?

I've been using DC 20 Heal checks to "surgically" remove them before they get to the brain of the afflicted.

After that, it's Remove Course, Cure Disease, and the like, or else it's lights out.

Well, some of the posters seem to manage to move along at, what would be for my group, an extremely rapid pace. Still, other posters give me some solace:

Thank you MattW, Armaxis, Evilvlous, Cortney, Raidou, Dr. Pweent, and Shadowdenizen, for helping my group not feel like total sluggards!

Like Kang, I wouldn't mind some advice on how to speed up play without either cutting the heart out of the adventures, or stripping the role-playing out of the individual sessions.

And don't suggest removing beer from our sessions--that's not going to happen!

This is all most illuminating. Most nights we don't get started till about 8 pm, and things start breaking up by 11pm, if not slightly before. We're all a bunch of former 1st ed guys in our 50s that have been playing together since '80, so we move kinda slow at times. But we're having loads 'o' fun, nevertheless.

My only concern with the sedentary pace was the possibility of burning out my players, so I am considering the idea of speeding up the csmpaign--though I am loathe to do so, cos I like everything pretty much as it's written.

My group plays twice a month, and have been doing so since June of 2006. We are now halfway through Blackwall Keep. Everyone's loving it, but I'm wondering about the pace of our progress.

For those of you who play about as often as my group, could you tell me when you started and how far you have progressed through the AP?

I like this method of identifying magic items. I'm going to run it by my players tonight.

That's Ok. You'll make things all even when they meet up with the Faceless One; and later with the Ebon Aspect.

Having just run through this section, I recomend you consider tossing a couple of extra Vecna cultists at your PCs, depending on how easy a time you find they are having.

Later on, if played properly (and played really nasty) the Ebon Aspect will give the PCs all they can handle.

My group is still murmuring about it.

Everything turned out well. The party elected to heal up first. Shortly after they entered the dark cathedral the Ebon Aspect reared up--and shortly thereafter it destroyed the elevator, trapping the party below and forcing them to deal with the creature.

The ensuing battle was memorable.

Thanks to all for the advice.

A couple of good suggestions here. Thanks. this is a great sight for this sort of thing.

A well-placed wand or a few potions might do the trick. Of course, it won't help the spellcasters from feeling like 5th wheels, but....

Any ideas about this...beyond resting, of course? Through the course of the game they already have a wand or two in their hands--though they don't know what they do.

No; it's a home-brew campaign world with stuff lifted from plenty of sources.

My players have just finished the encounter with the Faceless One and his kenku cultists. They are low on hit points & spells, and appear to be getting ready to assault the ebon aspect--which would seem suicidal.

The players have considered and are rejecting the possibility or resting first. I feel this is due to the sense of urgency they feel, that the need to confront whatever is happening in/around the black pool requires immediate action.

Where they got this feeling from I have no idea! (Sarcasm here; I know that it's my fault.)

My question is, what can I do at this point to prevent the coming suicidal confrontation, without either appearing arbitrary or pulling the punch?

The party is also considering cutting and running; telling the authorities in Diamond Lake what is going on--and letting them deal with it.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks for the info. The boxed set is an old 2nd ed. set, isn't it?

I was hoping that there was somewhere a copy of the complete city map of the city of Waterdeep, as outlined in the sourcebook, rather than having to cut and paste together the pieces of the map which are in the Waterdeep Sourcebook.

Does anyone know anything about that?

My players are finishing up Blackwall Keep and will therefore soon be heading to the Free City. As my campaign is set in FR, Waterdeep will be the Free City.

I picked up the Waterdeep sourcebook a couple of years back with this in mind. While the book has a series of very nice partial maps of the city, there is no overall city map. You know, something poster-sized that pulls all those partial maps together.

Yet I seem to recall that there was one, somewhere. Am I misremembering? Was it included in one of the mags?

Can anyone help me out?

D (with a healthy dose of C).

No one in my group has seen anything so far about 4e that indicates that it make as big a leap forward as 3.xe jumped ahead of 2e.

So we'll probably stick with 3.5 through the AoW campaign, and probably the STAP as well.

However, we'll all probably pick up the 4e core books for tournament play, and so we'll see how it goes.

David Roulston wrote:

So I've had e-mail confirmation that #358 & the poster are "winging" their way across the border toward my mail box.

Do we have any word yet as to what actually happened? Why did we Canuckleheads not get shipped this stuff in the first place?

BTW: Here's a huge can 'o' "Age of Worms": why are we still paying so freaking much for EVERYTHING coming out of the States when the dollar is at par?

Because it can take up to 2 years for prices to change to reflect that unfortunately.

BTW I'm still waiting for email confirmation.

There's a groundswell coming though. Even Canadians won't put up with this; not when 90% of us live within 100 miles of the American border.

Cross-border shopping is once again alive and well. If Canadian retailers don't wake up they'll be out of business before they know it. We've been gouged by the difference in the dollars for years. Enough is enough, even for us "nice guys."

I feel fortunate. "The Return of the Eight" was a (much-adapted) penultimate game in my last campaign--a campaign which ran for over 20 years.

(Ever noticed how so many campaigns of old-time D&D players have such long lifespans?)

Anyway, the castle and the town of Magepoint became the retirement home for several of the epic-level PCs when the old campaign finally ended.

So now, 200 years later, when the "Age of Worms" PCs finally journey to Magepoint, they'll have to opportunity in interact with some of the PCs' retired epic-level PC or their descendants.

You should have no problem. My PCs started out with a 32-point buy, and there were 8 characters to start (now down to 6 PCs as 3FOE winds down).

If it becomes neccessary, an extra wolf here, an extra fire-beetle swarm there, and your PCs should be running for the hills just like all of the PCs in the many and diverse campaigns that have run before yours.

Age of Worms is a great campaign. That said, DM prep is everything. Know the stat blocks of the major baddies intimately; know what they can do, and try to find the best and most evil combo of NPC abilitlies, spells, etc. before any given game night even begins.