Erik Mona's page

Erik Mona wrote:

None of the Week 1 titles explicitly say "Part X of X" or anything (that I remember). JLA is really the main one that feels like only part of a story, though all of them hint at more going on in the major plot, and almost all of them end with a cliffhanger splash page.

The Navy Seals story in the second half of Men of War says "Part 1 of 3" ;-)

I just noticed that when I reread the issue last night for my most recent New 52 Review. I'm up to TEN reviews so far, and now all I need to do is harness the power of the Speed Force so I can crank out the last four Week 1 reviews before Week 2 begins in about 24 hours...

I read Marvel avidly in the 80s and a little in the early 90s, and then pretty much abandoned it after the Legacy Virus and never really looked back. I picked up Grant Morrison's whole run on New X-Men and I picked up the Ultimates because I followed Bryan Hitch from Authority, but other than that I've pretty much turned my back on the House of Ideas. Civil War, from a distance, looks exactly like the sort of mega-crossover shock-value garbage that DC has been churning out lately, and I was never tempted to come back.

I started with DC during the Who's Who run about 1984. I picked up some old multi-story Brave & the Bold issues from the early 70s or so at a baseball card convention about the same time, and was exposed to stuff like Manhunter and the Metal Men, which I found really appealing.

I also really liked Keith Geffen's Justice League, but eventually fell out of DC in favor of Marvel and ultimately image in the 90s. A lot of DC really sort of sucked around that period, so I didn't consider it much of a loss.

A friend I met in college convinced me to try out the "Batman broke his back, and now Azrael and now Dick Grayson is Batman," and I generally thought it was pretty cool. I also picked up Zero Hour, which led right into Starman and the Golden Age limited series by James Robinson, and that reignited my childhood obsession with the Justice Society and the All-Star Squadron and the other Earth-2 heroes.

I collected DC from that point until I left Wizards of the Coast and moved away from my comic-collecting friends and my old comic store. I fell out of the routine of weekly trips to the store, and have essentially grazed trades ever since.

But I haven't even done very well with that, as I basically lose track of DC continuity around the point of 52 and Infinite Crisis.

I don't care about Marvel continuity anymore, and am not interested in collecting Marvel titles. They had me with Agents of ATLAS, which served to rekindle some of my enthusiasm, but also reminded me the heartache of having your favorite book canceled out from under your feet.

I find that the New 52 approach lets me "burn my idols" in terms of my connection to the past continuity of these characters and treat these books as a fresh start, which has been very appealing to me.

That's a rather long answer to "Do you read Marvel," but I've been doing a lot of writing about comics lately, and I can't really turn it off.

I'm reading reviews that seem to be implying that Barbara is not working with Batman Inc, or with any of her Oracle contents, but this is in the same time period as Batman Inc.

So far in Week 1 none of the titles have any reference to "Batman, Inc.", not even Batwing, which as I understand it either was a Batman, Inc. character or fits the concept like a glove.

There has likewise been no mention of Oracle anywhere, though I suspect they will get around to this shortly.

None of the Week 1 titles explicitly say "Part X of X" or anything (that I remember). JLA is really the main one that feels like only part of a story, though all of them hint at more going on in the major plot, and almost all of them end with a cliffhanger splash page.

Again, the stories themselves aren't bad, but as a reboot this thing isn't really offering anything new. I don't see how it's going to magically draw in new readers, because continuity isn't the main barrier to new readers - the style of storytelling and general format of monthly comics is.
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I actually disagree slightly in that I do think continuity has been a major barrier. I left comics for a year and missed out on a ton of stuff, and the glimpses I saw of crap like Brightest Day and Blackest Night really made me, a lifelong DC fan, feel as though I had missed the bus and couldn't really catch up.

I think the "writing for trade" style employed by, say, Geoff Johns is also a huge part of the problem. I think a book like Action #1 was definitely worth my money, because I got a more or less complete story. Same with Animal Man #1. NOT the same with Justice League #1, which was at best a third of a story and was, in retrospect, a pretty bad way to launch the reboot.

>>>
Why couldn't DC have just done a true reboot and been done with it? (Or preserved continuity - such as it was? This straddle-the-fence approach seems gutless and weak.
>>>

I think that's my major take-away so far.

Most of the things that ring untrue and confusing about these titles have to do with writers wanting to keep precious parts of the convoluted previous continuity (I mean Dove is dating Deadman? Is that really necessary?) and not embracing the opportunities presented by a fresh start.

The good books (Animal Man, Action, and Batgirl, basically) take advantage of the fresh start to do something new.

The worst ones (OMAC, Hawk & Dove, and maybe even JLI) are so riddled with references to convoluted continuity that they seem like major disappointments, at least to someone who hasn't been an active comic reader over much of the last 7 years or so (i.e. "the target audience").

Making a clean break lets the old universe be the old universe, and lets the new universe be more accessible and exciting. Trying to play it both ways, I predict, is going to be the major criticism of this effort as a whole.

But then, posts on this very forum about beloved seventh-generation heroes I've never even heard of and don't care at all about suggest that maybe DC knows more about how to satisfy their audience than I do, so who knows?

Right now I'm judging each book on its own merits, based on a read of the single issues. By that metric, with no emotionalism or nostalgia involved, I'd say they're batting about .650, which is a lot better than I expected.

I'm not so sure. Action #1 contains a reference to Clark's three handsome friends, two young men and a young blonde woman. A lot of folks online (me included) suspect that trio to be Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, and Saturn Girl from the original Superboy story.

Here's my understanding of the New DCU timeline, based on clues from Week 1.

Six Years Ago: The Joker starts murdering people in Gotham. Presumably, Batman is active at this time, but very much in his "urban legend" phase.

Between Six and Five Years Ago: A young, brash Superman arrives in Metropolis.

Five Years Ago (ish): Batman, Green Lantern, and Superman meet during events that will eventually lead to the creation of the Justice League.

Three Years Ago: Buddy Baker retires as Animal Man.

Also, both Batman: The Killing Joke and Crisis on Infinite Earths are considered in continuity, and presumably happened some time in the last three years.

Based on an off-handed comment from Superman in Swamp Thing (which takes place "today"), the Death of Superman arc probably also happened some time in the last five years.

Right. This is very deliberately done and explained within the context of the story in both Justice League #1 and Action #1. Apparently Action will jump to the modern day of the new DCU after the first arc, but I hope the generally positive reviews the issue has gotten will encourage them to stay in this earlier time for a while longer. It's very interesting.

My short review is that it didn't really take advantage of the "reboot" to do anything particularly new or interesting with the character, with Gotham, or with anything, really. I guess it's nice to see that Jim Gordon has red hair again and Dr. Arkham is still around, but beyond that... ennh.

I also think the artist needs to work a little on his sequential storytelling. I had to read a few sequences over again to completely understand what was happening. He's actually quite a good artist, but I'm not sure he's a great storyteller.

The issue just seemed like any ordinary filler issue of any era of Batman ever. Amusing, and a good way to pass 10 minutes, but nothing really special.

Just for fun, I've decided to review all 52 #1's, pretty much one issue a day, until the end of September. My reviews are on my personal blog (i.e. have nothing to do with Paizo), but I figure some of you would get a kick out of reading them.

You can find them HERE.

So far I've done Justice League #1 and Action #1. Later tonight I will post my third review, for Animal Man #1, which I think is in many ways the most interesting book of the week.

I've read all of the issues so far, and I think I'd rank them like this:

Excellent: Action Comics #1, Animal Man #1.

Decent: Justice League #1, Batgirl #1, Swamp Thing #1, Men at War #1, Justice League International #1, Stormwatch #1, Static Shock #1.

Needs Improvement: Green Arrow #1, Batwing #1, Detective Comics #1, OMAC #1.

Absolutely Awful: Hawk & Dove #1.

We've just uploaded images of two nasty critters from Heroes & Monsters, the Lich and the Medusa!

Now you've piqued my interest sir!

If the details on Kyra's cloak are truly as impressive as the paint masters at Gencon suggested?

This is one instance where I think the production run is even better than the paint masters. The back of Kyra's cloak is absolutely incredible.

I've got a ton of high-res images from WizKids. Now I just need to get the art department to size them and add some logos, and the previews will begin to flow fast and furious. It may take until early next week, but a parade of images is now imminent.

I think I shall begin with one no one has listed yet! :)

We are working on something behind the scenes, but I don't want to promise anything until it is actually ready to go.

Rob Silk is an exemplary GM. It's fun just to sit and watch him run a game. Contests, Rob!

We do not currently have any plans to do follow-up boxed sets, but anything is possible under the right circumstances.

The monster stats in the Beginner Box just going to be like that for the Beginner Box? Or is that the way monster stats are going to be now?

This is a preview of how monster stats will look in the Beginner Box. The monster stat blocks for things like the Pathfinder Adventure Path and Bestiary 3 will be the standard format we've been using.

This is not a sneak preview of "Pathfinder second edition" or anything beyond a look at what the insides of the Beginner Box will look like.

Having listened to far too many of the Big Finish Audio Dramas, I have grown to appreciate Colin Baker and Paul McGann more. When given a good script they make wonderful doctors.

Can you list the names of a couple of "good" Big Finish Audio Dramas? I listened to one that I think was called the Four Doctors, with Paul McGann and Sylvester McCoy and a few others, and I must say I thought it was one of the biggest wastes of time in recent memory. The script was terrible, the actors were clearly recording their parts in isolation, and the whole thing just sort of reeked of embarrassing fanfic.

But I know there must be some decent ones, right?

I mean, right?

Splendid chap, all of them.

Nice.

Is someone with only the Beginner Box going to be able to generate a character to play in Pathfinder Society?

Probably, though it might involve a few on-the-fly conversions to bring it up to speed with things like CMB and CMD. We're still working on those details.

Mostly we just wanted to give first-time players a sense of what the four major character types were like, and hence what they were about to get into, in as fast and fun a way as possible.

It seems obvious to me that they need to do a multi-Doctor Time War story with Paul McGann and others for the 60th anniversary.

You could easily find a way to incorporate most if not all of the living Doctors, and I'm willing to bet almost all of them would be game for it.

THIS IS THE GAME OF RASSILON!

I'm currently chatting with WizKids about how we want to handle the release of this type of information. I am in a sharing mood, especially insofar as images are concerned.,,

I just wanted to follow up on what Vic said to add that I am absolutely blown away by the quality of the latest outputs from WizKids, which look more or less identical to how the final production minis will look. I showed them around to the staff, and most of them thought I was pulling their leg or something. At least half of them told me that they thought these were the best pre-painted minis they had ever seen, and I must say I find myself agreeing.

I am confident people will be very, very pleased with the paint quality of these miniatures.

We debuted a new system at PAX this last weekend that I think we can refine to something that will be sent to Venture-Captains to run in their home regions. This being said, it will probably be a couple of months before we can find the appropriate time it will take to modify the program, but it is definitely on the list, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen before the end of the year, certainly.

We are looking to expand the "PAXPort" demo program so it can be run in other locations in the future, but it will probably be at least October (and maybe later) before we can do so. So while there is no opportunity to play these events outside of PAX currently, they will likely be available to a wider audience in the relatively near future (in some form).

All this seventh Doctor talk is making me itchy.

If someone mentions the Happiness Patrol, I'm banning them.

:)

Sadly, I fear I may just be Pex.

Paizo sort of abandoned PAX years ago, when it was a much smaller, very different show (and we were a much smaller, very different company, honestly).

So there hasn't been any formal PFS at PAX until this year. This year is a modest showing (we're running three tables of PFS every slot), with the main focus on first-come, first-served hour-long demos.

This convention attracts an enormous number of tabletop-curious young gamers. The way the hall works is that unless you want to stand in line for an hour or two to get some booth promo or play a demo of a not-yet-released video game, you can do the "hall" in about two hours, maybe less.

That means a lot of people, many of them teens and young adults dropped off for the whole day, have to spend their time doing _something_, and that something is often "try out a bunch of tabletop games."

WotC has got the formula mastered, and the lines of complete newbies lining up to throw dice are absolutely enormous.

So we're going to see how interested this crowd is in Pathfinder, and go from there.

I'm excited!

I think so.

I like what I am hearing on Imperial dragons. and for the record, if you include kitsune in the racial book you may change my mind about it being a totally useless book. But I am also not very happy with Skortched Urf right now for how they are dragging their feet in making their Fursona into a real book. I have been looking over the Jade Regent adventure path and while I want more Oriental Adventures style material it's a good start for right now.

I am confident we will change your mind on the ARG. It's got fox people and hyena people and cat people.

Lots and lots of people.

PAX East is a possibility, though if I were to guess at this very second I would say it is more likely for next year than this year.

The demos will be 1 hour long. There will be some take-aways and stuff, but the main focus will be on playing Pathfinder.

Liane's assessment largely matches my thoughts when I created Nidal. I'm not sure how well it matches with what we have subsequently published, but Nidal has been exceptionally isolationist since before the end of the Age of Darkness, so while there are plenty of Ulfen, Nidalese, Varisians, etc., most Nidalese would consider themselves Nidalese first and anything else second.

I do agree that there are lots of fetchlings running around, though! Probably more than a few dhampyrs, as well.

True . . . but if you simply look at the history of Absalom (not to mention the very name), you'll see there are an assortment of similarities to Judaic history that it probably wasn't an accident. Was Aroden meant to be a "God" figure in Golarion? I'm not so sure about that myself; however, it would be simple to plug in that aspect to the old faith in that world if one desired to do so. Again, it would be an easy interpretation, so long as you didn't try to over-analyze it as needing to be an exact match, because it certainly isn't that!

Absalom is definitely an analog of Jerusalem, with perhaps a bit of Constantinople thrown in. Those ideas definitely informed the original idea of the City at the Center of the World.

Aroden isn't intentionally supposed to be a God/Allah/Jehovah/Jesus figure, though. I can see how you could layer that on him (he certainly works as a "monotheism" sort of cultural god, if you want to play it that way), but it isn't really part of the central idea that informed his creation.

Aroden's not even the only god (or super-powered being) that has this treatment - the Peacock Spirit, Count Renalc, and even Nex all have the same stuff applied. It's a mystery for GMs to clarify and adapt to their own campaign.

Interesting, and true. As an aside, Aroden, Count Ranalc, and Nex are all "my" NPCs (in that I created them), and I have plenty more to say about all of them. So while I'm not 100% sure we'll ever come out and say "so here is the deal with Aroden's death," I am dead certain that a lot more about all of these characters will be revealed in the future.

Radovan was statted up in a semi-recent issue of Kobold Quarterly. I'm certain many of the characters will appear in stat form eventually, but we don't have any immediate plans to do so.

Since I actually am concerned about these characters' handedness for another project (ahem), I can say with authority that the way these characters appear on the covers of the books is the "real" version of these characters. The versions on this blog post are a special bonus mirror-image view.

Hhm spotted a few errors in the Pawn images gor the beginners box above.

Don't get me wrong I love the reuse of Paizo owned (and very smexy) art.

But...

>Thats a Tenebrus worm not a Giant Centipede

>Thats a Dream Spider not a Giant spider (tho it could be a giant dream spider)

>Thats a Salt Wight from AP#38 not a zombie

>Thats a Dire Wolf, not a regular Wolf

>And the Generic Orc depicts the Half-Orc Rage Prophet iconic from the APG.

Hoping thats a draft...

Yeah, we shifted around some art here and there to make for the best images we could find for the Beginner Box. We figured that the intended audience--newbies--wouldn't mind that we called the wolf something different in Hollow's Last Hope. ;)

A lot, but not all, of the creatures shown above are in Heroes & Monsters. Of those, a lot, but not all, are based on the above illustrations. :)

Dragon pricing should come very soon.

All of the goblins in this set are practical sculpts, and we have not shown any of those off yet. They look amazing, though.

We are not cutting the fiction.

It is a fundamental part of the AP mix.

I get that some people don't like it, but it is here to stay.

The end. :)

The first Pathfinder product ever (Burnt Offerings) had the first mention of the PFS. We have to engage in speculation (until someone from Paizo chimes in and gives us the facts) whether they first came up with the name "Pathfinder Society" and then decided to name their new adventure paths after it, or came up with Pathfinder and then thought it would also make a good name for an organisation of adventurers, but I think they came up with the product name first.

We came up with the name "Pathfinder" because we wanted to play off the idea of an "Adventure Path" magazine, and that had a nice ring to it.

I came up with the "Pathfinder Society" as an organized play/"Adventurer's Guild" within Pathfinder (the "magazine") within about 10 minutes of coming up with the name for the monthly product.

There was always going to be a product element and an Organized Play element, and I really wanted to kill two birds with one stone, using the same general name for both.

So it all kind of happened at the same time. "Pathfinder Chronicles," as the written reports of the organization and the name of the campaign setting line, also happened at pretty much the exact same time.

So blame me. :)

While I know that goblin and skeleton encounter packs would be winners, I would suggest that a Summon Monster series would be extremely useful (especially the lower level spells).

This is a very good idea. It may take us several sets to get all of the summon monster critters out there, but once that has been done a collection like this would be invaluable.

Bump, bump, bump.

Who will step up to the plate to help us in our hour of need?

Who dares to challenge a dungeon designed by Jason Bulmahn or yours truly as a rich reward for dedicated service?

Ok, ok, ok. Who just wants a free badge to an awesome convention that sold out way back in May?

YOU do, that's who.

So please volunteer! :)

That's because you don't make it out this way. Not that I'm recommending it or anything; I'd rather be on your side of the mountains, rain and all.

Me too! :)

In fact, as far as "on my side," you're probably talking about the mountains, but I'm definitely talking about Lake Washington.

Steak-N-Shake? They're good and all, but you've got to check out Five Guys next time you're in Indy. Best burgers and fries around. And yes, I am including In-N-Out in that comparison.

Luckily we have Five Guys here in Washington. For a fast food joint, their burgers are phenomenal.

I mean, they're no White Castle (which we also don't have), but they're pretty good!

Hobbun wrote:

Doesn't it rain a lot in Washington? I'll take the hotter weather over a lot of rain any day. :)

Believe it or not, there's a lot more of the state of Washington than just Seattle and its surrounding environs.

Could have fooled me!

Are the minis that are most likely candidates for the encounter packs less likely to take up "space" in the random sets?

Not necessarily.

The commonality of creatures in the Heroes & Monsters set is based largely on their commonality in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. To take examples from the actual set, an orc warrior would be a common, because most encounters featuring them likely feature several. Most encounters featuring a lich, on the other hand, feature only one lich. So the lich in Heroes & Monsters is rare.

If we decided to do a "lich's lair" encounter pack, that pack would include a repainted (and possibly slightly resculpted) lich and whatever other minis from the set would be most appropriate for a lich-y encounter.

Generally speaking, Encounter Packs won't contain more than one of a figure that is classified as rare in the random sets. But a lot of minis from the random sets will probably never show up in an Encounter Pack at all.