Eremite's page

A slower release schedule would suggest that they're about to embark on another round of retrenchments. Hmmm....

Hell if the dollar gets weak enough, people can outsource to us!

I hadn't seen it before but, then again, I rarely read these messageboards. Anyway, I hope the Paizo folks change their minds. Again, I'm not so concerned about saving money as not having to wait.

I live in two different countries, neither of which is the United States, so a subscription makes no sense for me and the postage costs are prohibitively expensive.

I buy every product as a PDF even though I play 4E (at the moment...;)) and was wondering if I could subscribe for PDF products only? I'm not so much looking to save money as to have things as they are released (they're good to read on planes!).

Is there enough demand for this? Would you like to start with me as a test customer?

(snip) OpenDesign's Wrath of the River King is in delve format, and is extremely rich in design and detail and rp opportunities.

2E's Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff was an excellent skeleton for a sandbox campaign at the same time as paying homage, as it were, to the originals.

If I was running WotC I would have made Revenge of the Giants something like that and then next year released an Epic homage to D1-D3 (just in time for Lolth's official publication for the MMIII). The fact is these two products would have sold well and possibly kept the "grognards" happy as well. And as plot is, IMO, a weakness for the current crop of WotC designers, it wouldn't have mattered because the plot has already been worked out for them.

I did the same recently with a hill giant that I wanted a 2nd-level party to encounter. I basically wanted an uncoordinated sack of hit points so I went with a 4th-level solo brute. It was just right.

The other option is to use a higher level minion version of the same creature. Defences and hit points, IMO, are simply two sides of the same coin (which I why I never agreed with solos getting defence bumps when their hit points are a multiple of standard or elite creatures). So if you have a high level minion with high defences, chances are it can take quite a few attacks by a lower level party before that single hit point is removed.

The other advantage of the high level minion is that even if it hangs around for a few rounds longer than expected, it won't be dishing out too much damage. That said, it could be a bit boring but may be worth a try in certain circumstances.

Yep... it's another dud 4E adventure by WotC.

Seriously, why can't the staff writers put something decent together? I love the 4E rules, the 4E game, but the story guys at WotC have no idea (IMO).

I don't know why they don't just hire the Paizo guys to write the adventures for them without the stats then have the WotC guys go back and add in the crunchy bits.

Seriously, again using that word, WotC needs to realise that it has a quality problem with the adventures it has published. With very few exceptions (and Rich Baker's name is the only one that basically guarantees there will be quality) the adventures that are being published are simply not up to scratch, and certainly not comparable to Paizo's offerings either now or in the "dead tree" Dungeon era.

I think Bill Slavicsek needs to stop writing Ampersand columns informing the world about how important he is and get down to the basic business of making sure that adventure products his team (and he loves to remind us that they are "his") produces are great products. Rich Baker can't be expected to write everything, can he?

Does anyone else have this?

I've avoided WotC adventures for a quite a while now unless they have Rich Baker's name on them (and I would also make an exception for Chris Perkins if he ever writes an adventure again).

I'm really wondering if this is the usual WotC style (grab random monsters of the right role and level and plonk them down together in an encounter without considering why the different types are co-operating) or most Paizo-ish (you know, where it actually has a plot).

Edit: I'm lost as a customer. There is time travel. I don't do time travel.

I'm running in the new timeline primarily because I like the DDi tools so much I just want to stick to canon as represented in the character builder etc....

I use older products, particularly the maps, as inspiration. It's very easy to convert an old 3.5E (or earlier edition) site into a post-Spellplague dungeon/ruin and the earlier edition descriptions can help spark ideas for the site.

Frex, I have a campaign centred around Silverymoon. I wanted a simple dungeon to run as an introductory adventure and looked at the map from 3E's Silver Marches product. I saw Rauvinwatch Keep about 20 or so miles west of Silverymoon and decided to make that a ruin touched by the Spellplague.

It's cool because I can use the earlier description to give some underlying logic and backstory to the dungeon and any lore-nazi (and I don't have any) would be able to find the easter egg that this represents.

My only real complaint about the 4E version of the Realms is that the maps are just so appallingly bad. They would have to be the worstmaps that I think WotC have ever published. I don't think I am being guilty of hyperbole for saying that.

I would almost argue that you -need- Paizo adventures if you're going to run 4E (unless you make your own). The 4E adventures by Wizards, IMO, just don't cut it. Sure, they've got some interesting encounters but they sorely lack anything resembling story and that's where the Paizo products have them beat.

Look at Scales of War: I'm not sure how a collection of semi-random monsters in unlinked adventures becomes an adventure path simply by virtue of having a common logo! Perhaps an exaggeration on my part, but it's certainly not an adventure path as we have seen from Paizo. It's not even up to the standards of Paizo's first effort, Shackled City!

I'm still laughing because Andy Collins apologised for a really minor article but never apologised for the Epic Level Handbook! ;)

I really want to see what's been done with cloakers but it looks like I have to wait until 24Jun. The drawbacks of living in Singapore....

While I'm not a big fan of the new cosmology, I was playing an Eladrin in my friend's campaign, and I really enjoyed the information on the Feywild in the book. I was actually a bit surprised at the level of detail they put into that particular plane.

The more realistic suggestions remind me of the fact that I have lived in Singapore for ten years.... ;)

PS: And I don't think I would live anywhere else!

Here are some of my suggestions for managing/dealing with depression.

1. Exercise.

Regular exercise has to be one of the absolute keys to banishing depression. Keep the weight off and radically change your eating (and drinking) habits. And then exercise some more.

2. Invest part of your life in others and not just for show.

3. Do good. Be good. Keep your conscience clean. A clean conscience is vital for dealing with depression.

4. Make your bed everyday. Some may read this and laugh but part of controlling depression is making sure you don't break off normal disciplines simply because you're feeling depressed. When you break those disciplines you feel guilty... which leads to further depression... which leads to a breaking of disciplines etc.... So, really, make your bed everyday. Ideally, try and keep your bedroom really tidy.

5. Exercise some more. Endorphins are better than drugs.

I've always thought of ki as simply being the oriental name for psionics so this makes sense to me. And one of my many unfinished 3.5E projects was to make the monk into a true psionic class.

There is precedent for this in 1E: an early Dragon magazine also converted the monk into a psionic class.

Disclaimer: For months I hated the new Realms. Until now I don't really see them as the -real- Forgotten Realms but I have grown to appreciate the setting.

This is what I like about the new Realms:

- It really is a clean slate. The overwhelming nature of the Spellplague really gives a DM, especially a new DM, licence to make the Realms their own without any need to have researched the minutiae of Realms history. And some DMs need that explicit licence.

- The Player's Guide is the first time that there has actually been a Player's Guide to the Realms. Other products may have had the name but they also served other purposes.

- I am addicted to WotC's online tools and their character generator as are my players. That's actually what forced my hand, as it were, to convert over to the new Realms.

- You can still use a lot of the older products for inspiration, particularly for sites for what are now ruins and dungeons! ;)

- Each country or region in the Campaign Guide gives you enough hooks and ideas to spark quite a few adventure and campaign ideas. Sure, there are only 2 or 3 pages but they're generally quite well written (and I love the consistency with the information in the Player's Guide).

This is what I don't like about the new Realms:

- The maps suck beyond all suckage. I don't know how else to express that. They suck beyond belief. I accept that a conscious decision was made to limit the amount of detail but the maps are appalling. Terrible. Waste of time. And too damn difficult to edit to add in interesting stuff... and even if or when you do the maps still suck.

- A lot of the canon explanations for what has happened suck. Suck beyond all suckage. Check out the "bizarre love triangle" involving Tyr, Helm and Sune (IIRC). Someone spends too much time watching soap operas for inspiration.

The Cormyr backdrop article had a wonderful map of Cormyr. I don't care if we never see a backdrop article again but I honestly hope that we will see more maps of that calibre.

On balance, I do recommend the new Realms if someone is looking for a 4E setting.

PS: Sorry about the overuse of "suck/suckage". I just didn't know how else to explicitly state how much the maps, um, suck.

Move to Singapore. There are lots of violent, anti-social people here too, and lots of alcohol, but the government absolutely smashes any anti-social behaviour.

Sometimes it is good to live in a LN country with a LE government! ;)

I really like the basic idea behind this NPC and I expect I will use him in one of my games. However, that name has to die a rapid death. "Paradigm" is bad enough (unless you are Bruce Cordell and you're having trouble remembering whether your novel is 2001: A Space Odyssey or something set in the Forgotten Realms) but teamed with the pseudo-Latin "Theoguard" it has become an evil abomination that needs a very powerful smite evil attack to blast it out of existence.

But I do like the concept a lot. If you have access to 2nd edition Dungeon magazines you might find The Knight of the Scarlet Sword adventure interesting as a slightly different take on something similar.

(snip) You got all them little countries that durn't even add up as big as Texas! And what the heck do you call them big fishy things over there, if you already done used Whales as a country name? (Fixed.)

I was hoping the bad pictures on the website were just bad photography... so the sculpts and paint jobs are really as bad as the website shows?

These are excellent! I'll definitely be using these in my games.

I'm not sure how much it matters but "blightspawned" is an existing template from Unapproachable East (FR sourcebook).

This is possibly one of the worst products ever published for any edition of D&D. I bought it thinking it might make a good gift for my best friend's son who has joined our games but it's trash.

Crap. I can't believe Chris Perkins, the writer of some of D&D's best adventures when he used to regularly contribute to Dungeon magazine, would sully his reputation with this rubbish.

When will this be available as a PDF?

My suggestion is Uthmere in the Great Dale. There are giants in the mountains nearby and the area has a long history of demonic activity. The Malgoth could be one of the many legacies of ancient Narfell (or, do what I plan to do, and replace the Malgoth with Eltab).

I'm another Australian albeit living in Singapore for the past eight years. I'm probably also the person who travels farthest to game: all my D&D games are played in Brisbane in person. Fortunately I'm in Oz semi-regularly on business so I still get my gaming in.

There are also some spellweaver ruins in 2E's Lands of Intrigue which I think is a free download at WotC.

Curious--do they have aluminum cricket bats?

Also remember that MM2 is also the MM with the most CR problems... (snip)

(snip) i can't figure it out, but there is something that doesn't fit in this adventure, and i don't like it for some reason. sure, the writing is good, and the maps are pretty, but there is an element of "wrongness" about this adventure i can't put my finger on. (snip)

I'm pretty sure the Core Rules 2.0 CD ROM has a colour picture of the kirre. I don't think I have the CD with me here in this country but I am sure someone else can find it for you.

I live in Singapore. I got my May issue of Dungeon in May (amazing!) but have yet to see my April issue of Dungeon or my April and May issues of Dragon.

I was hoping that the delivery times would be better in Singapore than in Oz (I lived in Singapore before and used to receive RPGA periodicals quite promptly) but it seems just as bad as when I lived in Oz.

Oh well, time to find that Customer Service email....

Sorry to be a stickler, but
1.) You can't commit Seppoku because your not samurai. Seppoku is for nobles do to the fact that it requires a "second" to remove the head after the deed is done, or if it looks like it's about to end too soon. the best you could hope for is...

2.) Harikiri. It's spelled and pronounced Harikiri. (Ha-Rl^e-K^e-R^e)

Shall I also apologise for being a stickler? ;)

My first DM, the guy who both taught me how to play and convinced me to play only about six times in the past 25 years, was the worst.

All characters were pregenerated by him using the 3d6 method so the character sheets were basically collections of 9s, 102, 11s and 12s. His essential philosophy was that everyone was average so there should be no high ability scores or bonuses from same. Sadly, this is also his philosophy in real life.

Weapons were also randomly determined... as were spells, even for clerics!

Adventures consisted of getting to a dungeon and then exploring it until you died. And this is where some more "interesting" rules came into effect. You see, his view was that because a dungeon was such a dangerous environment you could not rest there so there was no recovery of spells or overnight healing. Oh, and you weren't allowed to exit the dungeon to find a safe place to rest. If you tried that, the inhabitants would attack.

Anyway, I'll stop there. Suffice to say I learnt the basic rules from his and DMed thereafter.

1. The Economist (subscriber)
2. Time (non-subscriber)
3. Dragon (former subscriber... but getting your subscription copy in Oz is quite problematic)

Not for any particular reason other than I believe I'm the last person on earth to receive my issue each month, but has anyone received 131 yet?

Oh, and so that this post isn't entirely irrelevant, I vote for the adventure by the English bloke... and I also vote for all future Dungeon magazines and D&D products to use real English instead of your American McEnglish. :)

God save the Queen!!!

I think it would be interesting to create another Adventure Path out of previously printed adventures, updated to 3.5e. Admittedly, they would be far less loosely connected than Age of Worms or Shackled City, but I bet you could weave together a compelling meta-plot.

I'd also be thrilled to purchase a compendium of adventures set in the Realms, updated to 3.5e.

--Eric

Another way would be to have a generic adventure path but include conversion notes for each campaign world or, as was done in Night Below, include the campaign-specific options (such as deity names) with each NPC etc....

Howdy,

I just wanted to mention that I really enjoyed your posts. I've just spent a very pleasant hour or so reading through them all. Thanks for posting and I hope you post more.

Scylla,

Is this the one that begins with the messenger snake? If so, I've never run it (although I enjoyed reading it) but I keep looking for opportunities to use that opening scene in one of my own adventures!

The fact is, Dragon desperately needs an online index here at this website. As it stands, Dragon magazines are almost disposable because the good ideas are outweighed by the bad ideas/ bad execution/ bad fiction and the sheer difficulty in relocating the good stuff.

An index is desperately needed ASAP.

(snip) And then there are the planes, which are sort of like a campaign setting. Look for a 10,000-word "Far Realm" article from the place's creator, Bruce Cordell, in #330. I've also got a juicy article by James Jacobs on Pazuzu which is shaping up to be the first in a series on cults of D&D demon princes. On deck: Zuggtmoy, Fraz'urb-Luu, and Baphomet, with others like Vukarik in Chains waiting impatiently in the wings (if the features prove popular, of course).

I don't want or need Sage Advice (if I really want a rules question answered, I prefer the ENWorld boards to the official reply) or fiction or broken "crunch" for uber-PCs but I do want articles that expand the more interesting parts of the D&D backstory.

You're the man, Erik!

PS; I'm one of those who is happy to see articles for FR, GH and Eberron. I like all three worlds and am also looking for more information on them.

Sure! Skip Williams is currently at work on a Forgotten Realms adventure in #121. We're also tinkering with up to 5 additional FR adventures to appear over the course of the next few issues beyond that, including one "super-special" three-part adventure by Eric L. Boyd.(snip)

Skip did a surprisingly good job on Raiders of Galath's Roost; I hope the next module is up to scratch as well.

I would _love_ to have Gary Gygax in the pages of Dragon again. Personally, I'd prefer something "meatier" than war stories, but I'll take what I can get.

That reminds me that I need to write Gary a few emails. . .

Then again, after seeing how good Maure Castle was perhaps it might be time to tap that creative mind of his for something new (as long as someone else is there to write the crunchy bits and ensure it is submitted on time ).

It really does sound like the problem is your DM.

Playing your cohort is largely your prerogative else it is a waste of a feat. I agree with a cohort having secrets and hidden motivations etc... but this cannot be at the expense of his primary role as your PC's loyal servant/ally etc....

Anyway, if Erebus is going to be such a key part of your DM's campaign, it might be in his best interests to allow the Darkness domain.

Delak,

The four maps combine into a single -reprint- of the map found in the FRCS hardback. In other words, they are missing -a lot- of detail.

It was a shame he stopped the column because it was so interesting hearing the old "war stories" simply because his early games had such a strong shaping effect on the game we all love.

I've been a subscriber from Australia for nearly two years.

The first year (when the distribution problems were really bad), every second issue went missing but the friendly customer service people simply sent me a new one.

The second year I seem to be down to every third issue going "walkabout" but, again, customer service fixes this pretty quickly.

I should mention, though, as it takes 8-10 weeks before the magazine reaches me... it takes 8-10 weeks before I know that I need to contact customer service because the magazine hasn't arrived. I should also mention that it only takes about 7-10 days for the replacement issue to arrive.

Considering the premium that is paid for an international subscription I am surprised both by the delays and the irregularity of deliveries.

I seem to recall that the problem wasn't the rights to the articles but the rights to the comics.

Kenzer & Co had not granted Dragon the rights to republish the Knights of the Dinner Table comics in electronic form. Kenzer came to an interesting settlement with WotC: Kenzer got the broadest possible licence for their Kalamar world PLUS the rights to a lot of 1E and 2E material which became the core of their Hackmaster RPG.

Anyway, I'm another who would love to see the old issues of Dungeon appear as PDFs through RPGNow or this website... anything but DrivethruRPG unless the DRM is removed.

I would like to see the intellect devourer written up. I've liked it since the original MM days but, to the best of my knowledge, have never actually used one in play. That may change in my next campaign, though....