Fletch's page

I had a good read-thru of Wormwood Mutiny and have an idea for how this AP can be used for good PCs or players who are less interested in the evils of piracy.

Since the whole Path leads aims toward Captain Harrigan being a secret spy for Cheliax, could the PC's take on that role themselves and play the slightly gooder agents pretending to be pirates in order to work their way into the inner circle of the Shackles? At the end of book 1, the newly-promoted pirate captain PC is approached by an agent of Cheliax with their plan. Meanwhile, Harrigan goes back to being a regular old vicious pirate who serves as the chief opposition to the PC's rise.

Thoughts?

Just for my curious mind, how would the game change if magic spells just had a flat effect regardless of caster level? Fer instance, just like a sword does 1d8 forever and always, a fireball would do 5d6 forever and always. Or cure light wounds would cure 1d8 forever and always.

Would that underpower the spellcasting classes?

I know one of the intents behind Pathfinder was to be backward compatible with 3.5 stuff, does that hold true?

I'm rarin' to run Age of Worms for my local Pathfinder-lovin' gaming group, but don't feel like converting 20 levels of adventures to official PF status.

Aside from calculating the occasional CMD when needed, is there anything inherently disruptive about having PF characters fighting 3.5 monsters?

I could probably be convinced to convert those monsters with class levels to PF classes, but I'd just as soon rather leave as is and go with the given feat selections/spell lists/etc. from the previous edition.

Any thoughts?

I've long wanted to combine several APs into a series of epic quests for the same party of characters, but am faced with the obvious difficulty of how to challenge PCs with something as simple as a shipwreck after they've become powerful enough to defeat a Runelord.

Is E6 the answer? On the surface it looks like it allows the PCs to become more skilled without gaining access to too-powerful magics or abilities. If that's the case, I can imagine scaling up the challenges on Smuggler's Shiv without having to worry too much about PCs having easy access to teleport spells which would negate the hazards entirely.

Is this feasible? I'm not opposed to having to put a lot of work into this. I'm not planning on converting every encounter of every book, only the real set-piece encounters or those which really add to the AP's story.

What I'm really looking for is if the E6 model, combined with Pathfinder's monster scaling rules, allows for a 15th level adventure to be pared down to challenge 6th level characters even if they have a bunch of feats and skills.

What's more, am I underestimating the power of an experienced E6 character and would they really not be challenged by a 1st level encounter even if the monsters and traps were bumped up.

Anybody else looking forward to S&S as an opportunity for some Spelljamming or maybe even conversion to a science fiction space setting?

I'm definitely going to be looking at this with an eye to making the seas into ether, islands into asteroids, and the Eye of Abendego into a black hole.

Seems feasible from the basic description, and I've been looking for a good space fantasy AP for longer than there have been APs.

Just wanted to make an AAAARRRRGGGHH! post upon my discovery that the musketeer option for cavaliers (as seen here) is not allowed in PFS play.

I'd happened across the archetype by accident the other day, and it inspired me to immediately make one and race to my nearest PFS game.

Sure engouh, the musketeer is specifically barred from Society play, so I needed to come make a frowny face to the only people I know who might sympathize.

:(

Now, I don't have a complete run of all the APs, but I do have some individual issues which are clearly my favorites. For those of you who have a more complete collection than I do, which ones (or parts of ones) do you think are the absolute best each series has to offer?

Fer instance:

RotRL: Burnt Offerings is one of my all-time favorites. I really like the first half of Skinsaw Murders, but Burnt Offerings is great from beginning to end.

CotCT: Unlike seemingly everyone else, I actually really like History of Ashes. Of the entire AP (one of my favorites as a whole), it's this book which provides the most consistent entertainment throughout.

SD: Meanwhile, I think I'll get a lot of agreement on Children of the Void being the top performer.

KM: Sound of a Thousand Screams is a great finale to a good campaign. Not only does it provide a great conclusion to the AP, but can be run just as well as a stand-alone.

As an added bonus, you might notice each of these are in a different level range, so there's the potential for an ideal campaign which goes Burnt Offerings --> Children of the Void --> ? --> A History of Ash --> ? --> Sound of a Thousand Screams.

Guess I need to find a favorite Chapters 3 and 5 to complete my Best of the Best AP.

I've sleuthed it out.

Paizo is clearly flipping through their old TSR library for AP inspirations and having done homages to Al-Qadim (Legacy of Fire), Birthright (Kingmaker), Ravenloft (Carrion Crown), and Oriental Adventures (Jade Regent), their next AP is obvious:

Spelljammer!

Some may point out that Planescape or Maztica are viable options too, but I submit that neither of them benefit from this -clicky- coming out the same month as that next AP begins.

The announcement of a collected edition and kinda sequel to Rise of the Runelords had me flipping back through my copies of the original series and an idea popped into my head.

Hook Mountain Massacre has always seemed entirely out of left field because it sent the PCs so far way from where they started and then shuffled them back to Sandpoint again for the start of Fortress.

What if, instead of roping them back to Sandpoint, the PCs followed up on clues available at the end of Hook Mountain and tracked the stone giant and his arms deal back to Jorgenfist directly? I mean, it's right there (relatively speaking) next to Hook Mountain and Ft. Rannik.

So the PCs come across this fotress of stone giants surrounded by a gathering army, infiltrate their way in, and defeat the badguy inside. As he's defeated, though, Mokmurian (or maybe even Karzoug himself?) laughs at the PCs because he knows they're already too late. He already has a unit of giants marching on Sandpoint. Now they have to race back to where they started to stave of the assault described in the first chapter of the book.

Heck, you could even have part of the attack lead directly to the collapsing of the ground which leads to the Scribbler's lair in Sins of the Saviors.

Some thoughts:

* Would defending their hometown be satisfying enough that it wouldn't be anticlimactic to do it *after* defeating the leader of the giants?

* I guess by then the PCs would be level 12 instead of the level 10 the siege of Sandpoint assumes. Advice?

* When would the PCs get a chance to research in the library at Jorgenfist to learn some of the plot background to figure out what's going on? Do they even need to?

* High-level PCs can move pretty quickly when they want to, but can I assume they'll be able to get back to Sandpoint ahead of the giants who have already left?

I just wanted to get that off my chest. The existance of a mutli-national organization of professional adventurers bugs the heck out of me. It makes the PCs' adventures seem common and reduces them to the role of errand-boys to the more experienced, famous and successfull Pathfinders.

I suppose it's pointless to rail against something so integral to the game system that they named it after them, but I've been wanting to say it for a while.

That's all, really. I'm hoping either enough people chime in here with enthusiastic support of the Pathfinder Society to change my mind -OR- other people who share my distaste join me in a public confession.

Or both.

To skip to the point, does anybody have any insights or theories on how kingdom building would go if none of the buildings produced magic items for the PCs to buy or convert to Build Points?

Basically, I'm part of that subsect of D&D gamers who doesn't like turning something fantastic like magical items into a common enterprise, and I don't like seeing them just popping up on the city market as if the local hedge wizard thought one of his fellow townsfolk would be in need of a flaming battle axe.

My instinct, then, is to just declare buildings don't produce magic items as described in the kingdom building rules and leave it up to PCs to craft their own, consign someone to do it for them, or even quest for ones they've heard legends about.

Because I've heard from a few people who've played Kingmaker that the magic item rules make for a windfall of build points, I feel it would even be beneficial to the game to remove that Easy Street option.

Any thoughts?

Out of curiosity, are there any backstories behind why different regions of the Stollen Lands are named as they are? The Narlmarches I can kind of guess at, assuming it's a mutated name referring to the forest's gnarled branches and a 'march' being a region of land.

But what about the Kamelands or the Tors of Levenies? Were those named after anybody or for any specific reason?

Alternately, does anybody have any good history they want to make up for this?

The missus treated me to an early Christmas present of a new Nook Color and it's dreamy.

I tested out its built-in pdf reader by loading up a Pathfinder book and it works nearly perfectly. I had no trouble transferring the file from my laptop to the Nook via the included USB cable. At full page the text is a little small, but I can zoom in to a comfortable size and the touchy-slidey screen makes it pretty smooth to just move the page down as I read each column. There are some challenges come map time, not only because it's a little extra work to fit the map into the now-zoomed page (I either have to glide around different sections of the map OR zoom back out again, look at the map, then zoom back in to read), but also because there's no easy way to flip back to the map as I read each room.

Aside from that extra complication, the only actual glitch I've found is that some of the sidebars are blackened out. I'm specifically reading Children of the Void (Second Darkness #2) and all the sidebars so far are illegible. The background image is reproduced in a sort of dark, negative image over which the black text is unreadable.

So there you go. I'd been doing some reading on eReaders recently and thought I'd return with a report of how mine's been treating me in the world of reading Paizo pdf products.

One of the design goals shared by both Pathfinder and D&D4e was to give players more options for their characters, giving them neat tricks and abilities at each level.

As a potential conversation topic, do you think this is a shift in player goals as far as RPGs go?

My old 2e gaming memories are kind of faded, but I don't remember being as oriented toward gaining new abilities as I was interested in engaging in new encounters. In effect, the adventure itself was the purpose behind gaming. Now it seems like the purpose is to level up your character. The reward is the new power, not the gaming experience.

At the end of a game session, are you more likely to fondly remember an awesome encounter (those orcs swinging across the lava pit on pendulums were insane!) OR how awesome your character was (my vault feet combined with my new springing sandals had me bouncing all over the place!)?

There's a bit of flavor I'm wanting to inject into my game and I wouldn't mind some feedback on the idea. Basically I'm looking at making spellcasting a bit more intricate and have my game's magic users be less of the "dodging thru battle hurling lightning bolts" and more of the "arcane gestures and incantations" experience. In other words, I'm looking for a higher risk to go along with the already high rewards of spells.

Basically, I want to remove the 'casting defensively' ability from the game. If you cast a spell in melee, your enemies will get an opportunity attack. The casting requirements are just too complicated to perform while ducking or weaving. The concentration skill would remain to avoid having your spell disrupted if damaged while casting.

Now, where I'm waffling on is exactly how much to screw over my spellcasters. 'No defensive casting' is little more than a flavor change. I'm considering going one step farther and having spellcasters actually be flat-footed. I might be open to the idea of allowing a concentration check to avoid being flat-footed, but I'm kind of fond of the idea of making spell casting a bit more vulnerable. Wizards and sorcerers would have to stay clear of battle or even have bodyguards during combat while clerics, paladins and such would really have to think deeply about when and where to cast their spells.

Any thoughts?

What decides whether a worshipper of Gozreh, fer instance, is a cleric or a druid? Does the follower make some sort of distinction in the way he views the god?

Can someone tell the difference between a cleric of Gozreh and a druid of Gozreh? Do they focus on different aspects of the god or interpret his aspects differently?

Adobe reader is a free program that allows me to read all the pdfs I buy online.

However, the files here also come zipped and I'm surprised that isn't based on some free unzipping program that would allow me to read them without having to purchase another program.

So far I've gotten by with reinstalling the 45-day trial of Winzip every six weeks, but that can't be the right way.

Any recommendations for unzipping software I should be using?

So far my only interaction with Lovecraft and Cthulhu was through a couple Call of Cthulhu RPG sessions in the 90s and Ash's quest to retrieve the Necronomicon. Frankly, I don't really get it.

If I were to try to educate myself a bit on what all the hubub was about, what book would you recommend I read first? Does Lovecraft write in any sort of chronology that I should make an effort to get his first novel or something early on? In case my thread title is misleading, I'm not actually looking for an encyclopedia of Elder Horrors, but rather trying to make an attempt to experience the stories that seem to have half the gaming world so frenzied.

Thanks all.

I've had to leave behind my gaming group in Washington when I relocated to San Diego. Looking at the awesomeness of the upcoming Kingmaker campaign, I realized this is a bad time to be without a gaming group.

So I thought I'd test the waters and see if there was anybody in the San Diego area interested in putting together a long-term, bi-weekly gaming group for the sake of Making some Kings when the books start dropping in February?

I'm more than willing to run the game (being one of those oddball gamers who actually really likes to DM), but I'm living on a ship these days and don't have a place to offer to meet up at.

In hopes of finding a good fit for my gaming style, I'll warn y'all that I'm more impressed by the player than the character. I'd rather game with a well-played human fighter than a "look at me" dazzle-fiend half-drow chain dervish warlock. Basically, my enjoyment of the game comes from the human interaction, not the Wowee! factor of how awesome you think your character is.

Does that make sense?

Anybody like that in the area?

Can someone point me to where I can change my mailing address? Do I have to change it as part of an order or can I just update?

With my vague understanding of how Paizo subscriptions work, I have until the release of the Pathfinder Bestiary to subscribe to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and get a free pdf with the print version of the main book.

Is that the ticking clock I'm under to scrape together the scratch to get my rulebook and pdf?

How close does a paladin's alignment have to be to his god's?

I was looking at ol' Cayden Cailean and thinking that his "brave adventurer" schtick would be a good hook for a paladin until you factor in that whole "chaotic" business.

Assuming I could come up with a way to roleplay a lawful character following a chaotic god, would this fly mechanically? Are paladins held by any sort of "one-step" rule for alignment?

I'm a month into my overseas deployment and I'm going a bit stir-crazy. Even though I've never played a lick of Warhammer, I've always enjoyed the painting aspect and thought that'd be something I could do out here to keep me sane.

I've been looking at the available minis and trying to figure out which army for which system I like*, but am having a hard time figuring out how to get the actual painting supplies. It'd all have to be mail-order, so I've eyeballed a couple starter sets here at Paizo, but I don't have the experience to be able to say "I need this color and this brush and this file and..."

Any advice? Is there a good starter kit worth buying? Should I buy all the pieces and colors I need piecemeal?

* For Warhammer I'm leaning towards Empire (maybe Bretonnians). For 40K, as much as love the Daemonhunter and Witch Hunter miniatures, they're kind of pricey. I'd probably go with Tao for sheer variety.

If I subscribed to Pathfinder right now, what issue would I get? Am I too late to start with #1?

The store page has three of them listed for April. Is that right?

Anybody have any favored pre-Pathfinder adventures they've adapted to fit into Golarion?

I've seen some discussion about placing the old Dungeon APs in Golarion, but what about some of the other popular mods?

Red Hand of Doom, fer instance. Where and how would y'all put RHoD in Golarion?

And the very cool Istivin trilogy from Dungeon Magazine? Or any of the Freeport adventures. Anybody put any thought in finding a home for them on Golarion?

Any other favorite pre-Golarion adventures y'all would like to see homesteaded here?

This may just come down to play style, but does anybody else have any thoughts on what appear to be filler encounters in published adventures? These are the encounters that just seem to be to kill time and give PCs more opportunities for experience points. Often times, these encounters have nothing to do with the setting or plot.

For example, Room D7 in Burnt Offering's Thistletop or B15 in Hook Mountain's Ft. Rannick. At best I would allow that they offer some encounter variety from whatever monster type otherwise fills the encounter area. Just as often, though, these encounters require a bit of backstory to even explain why they're there and the PCs may never know why there's a harpy living with the ettercaps (or whatever).

Again, this likely comes down to play style, but I've taken to cutting 30-50% of the encounters in the average pre-published adventure for my group.

Any other thoughts?

The Mushfens in Varisia are a geographical concept I'm unfamiliar with. Now, I've seen marshlands at the *end* of rivers where the water slowly seeps out of the river rather than just emptying into a sea. Here, however, it seems like the marshlands exist along one side of the river for its entire length.

How does that work? Is the north bank of the river solid ground while the south bank is marshy? If the river seeps into the mushfens for its entire length, how does the water continue to flow west to the coast?

Does the Mushfen's water source from somewhere else and actually flow *out* of the fens and into the river and coast?

Is there a real world geographical event this is based on?

Just out of curiosity, does LoF take place in a region covered by the Pathfinder Campaign Setting or does this expand the known world into the eastern continent?

Now that I'm hearing of groups completing Runelords (and even Crimson Throne), I'm curious to hear what some of those groups are doing at the end of the Paths.

Are your players content to drop their 15-16th level characters to start up new firsties with the next AP? Do you have denoument adventures to let them reach level 20? Any epic plans beyond that?

Do the heroes from Runelords have any connections to the events or heroes from Crimson Throne?

I'm signed up to run a few Living Forgotten Realms mods at Conquest NW next weekend for the RPGA and it suddenly occured to me that I hadn't seen any listings of Pathfinder adventures for the con.

Anybody know of anything being supported there? I've got a couple slots set aside for actual play and I could just as easily make those Pathfinder games as LFR games.

At first glance, Maure Castle doesn't seem like the adventure for me as it seemed a bit story-lite and focused more on that "1st Edition Feel" of bunches of challenges with little apparent reason other than being challenges (I mean, seriously, who makes a killer statue to guard his lair and includes two weapons the critter is especially vulnerable to?*).

However, I was eventually drawn to it by virtue of it being one of the few high-level adventure series I could find and my readings here have revealed a deep level of mystery behind the dungeon that I hadn't expected (and of which, I confess, I understrand very little).

So as I come in to this completely ignorant, let me see if I've got the basics of this thing down pat:

- Maure Castle itself is completely looted up to whatever barrier kept the explorers from reaching the next level of the basement.

- Eli was one of the more dedicated looters and eventually found these "Unoppenable Doors" some distance to the west that lead to a couple dungeon levels that aren't actually under Maure Castle...or any building it seems.

- From those levels, Eli dug a tunnel east to breach the previously inaccessable dungeon levels that are actually below Maure Castle.

Is all that right? So...what were those "western" levels for? Did the Maure family make dungeon levels with no building on top of them? It doesn't seem like they were even designed to connect with the lower Castle levels.

I also can't seem to wrap my head around the Maure's themselves. I can't tell if I'm being dense or if the information is conflicting, but are the family members themselves still alive?

Finally, while I took a peek recently at Rob's website (at Pied Pipers), I'm still not sure if there are any plans to finish the dungeon series and actually answer the mysteries that have been hinted at throughout. Since that's the thing that interests me the most, I can't even consider running this adventure until I know there's going to be a satisfying conclusion.

* Probably the same fella who built the Scorpion King's pyramid with the heiroglyphic description of how to kill the Scorpion King...

My games never seem to last past 5th level, so I'm pretty ignorant about actual high-level play. Still, there are some things that jump out at me as I flip through high-level adventures that I suspect the experienced players around here can help me out with.

1) When a powerful critter (say a dragon, fer instance) is listed as having a bunch of attacks (bite and 2 claws and 2 wings and a tail...) does he get ALL those attacks in one round? Even assuming it's a full-round action to use them all, are we really talking about six attacks all at once?

B) Does dice-rolling ever become irrelevent in high-level play? When I see NPCs and beasts with something like +24 to hit, the variance in a d20 role doesn't seem as impacful. In your experience, do such random factors become decreasingly important at high-level play?

At the birth of Dungeons and Dragons, adventurers were basically groups of people looking to loot ancient burial grounds or rob from less civilised monsters.

At some point, though, D&D became about vanquishing villains and stopping their wicked plots. While that obviously makes for better storytelling, every so often I appreciate a good dungeon raid.

Whispering Cairn is one of my all-time favorite adventures. It presents a history-rich environment with clever traps and dangerous foes which all make sense and it's presented as nothing more than a "I think there's some treasure in there" concept. The fact that most of the treasure was historical artifacts rather than just boring old cash and gems made it even better (the PC's risked their lives to get rich...and they didn't find a cent...hehee).

I understand Entombed with the Pharoahs is much the same, a bunch of adventurers risking their very souls for nothing more altruistic than getting rich.

Any more adventures like those floating around out there?

Rise of the Runelords had a great campaign introduction just by virtue of the goblin attack.

Curse of the Crimson Throne followed that up with a really clever PC tie-together and the targetted revenge on Lamm.

What hook kicks off Second Darkness?

I suppose I *could* wait until my Christmas-money fueled Paizo Shop-o-Rama, but I figured I'd ask here anyways just to see what others thought about it.

Despite having it on my shelf for the better part of a year, I’ve yet to play Star Wars Saga. That’s a real shame too, ‘cause I recently took the time to go through the rules and found it to be an almost perfect blend of the best of 4e and 3.5 D&D. After putting in more than a little thought in making an amalgam version of the two rules systems, I’ve found that the Star Wars game has already done most of the work for me and presented a game system that shares the ease of play of 4e with the breadth of play options available in 3.x.

Has anybody spent any time working SWSaga into a viable D&D replacement? Are the equipment tables as interchangeable as they seem? Any good ideas for talent trees for the D&D classes? Any thoughts one SWSaga rules that wouldn’t translate well into D&D game?

I've still two issues to go on Crimson Throne before I get to Second Darkness, but based on forum chatter about it, there are a couple things I was hoping y'all could clarify.

A) When the aboleth dropped a big, honkin' rock on Varisia, was that the cataclysm that destroyed Thasilon?

2) Are drow just from Varisia or are they a world-wide phenomenon?

Thanks, crew. I love the way Golarion is expanded with each issue of Pathfinder, but don't want to wait to find out the answers to these questions.

Is this module the grand finale of the Falcon's Hollow series?

One of my favorite things about Living Greyhawk was the way some mods would tie together over extensive campaigns.

Anything like that happening in PFS yet? Anything like that slated for the future?

Runelords and Crimson Throne both had obvious and strong ties to the region they were placed in. Still, you were able to move them off-planet if you liked without losing much of the depth and history.

What little I've heard of Second Darkness, though, suggests it involves far bigger picture stuff like the origins of drow and the planet's astronomy. For those of you reading this Path, is it more locked in to Varisia than the previous campaigns? Could you see this adventure working in a homebrew world or in Eberron or something where maybe they've already established the origins for Drow and have their own cosmology?

In y'all's experience, what parts of Pathfinder RPG are game fixes as opposed to added options?

Fer instance, I can see pretty much all of the new spell descriptions as fixes meant to tone down or de-confuse some rampant spell uses. Meanwhile, extra abilities for core races is just added player options.

Does anything else stand out to you as "this is a fix that needed to happen"?

This doesn't exactly fit in here, in fact I've already posted this same question on the WotC boards (here) where it seems more appropriate. Still, the readers there don't seem to be as willing to muck with their favorite settings as the readers here do, so I wanted to tap into the Paizo creativity as well. Here's my post as it appeared over there:

I’m pretty squarely on the fence when it comes to Eberron. There’s a lot I like about it, but I’m continuously waffling on whether or not I would want to run it. The biggest hurdle, I’ve recently realized, is how “contained” the world feels.

Looking at the map of Eberron, it just feels kind of small. I know this is just my opinion and there could be some strong arguments about how Xen’drik or Argonessen satisfy the “mysterious east” or “here there be monsters” mystique, but I’m honestly thinking of expanding the globe a bit so it isn’t a case of where you can go from Khorvaire to Sarlona by sailing east AND west.

Fer instance, I’d really like to expand Droamm and the Shadow Marches to make them larger, more looming areas of potential monster threat on the edge of civilization. Beyond the Shadow Marches there could be some distant, unknown wastelands or something.

However, one of the things I like most about Eberron is that it doesn’t make any attempts to mirror real world cultures. There are no Feudal Japan style nations or toga-wearing Roman-esque nations. So without rubber stamping a Nile Valley of mummy-filled pyramids or the like, what do you think there’s room for on Eberron? What kind of territory do you find lacking that I could add?

Perhaps a homeland for the dwarves where we find the clans of Mror Holds are just a colony of dwarves who escaped an oppressive and evil nation of dark dwarves. I can see the Mark of Warding taking on a new meaning when used to enslave others.

A birthplace of the gods where natives are convinced the gods once walked the land? Not only does this become a site of pilgrimage for the devout of Khorvaire, but the local legends could provide some insight into the pre-split days when the pantheon was united.

What Runelord ruled the land now occupied by Turtleback Ferry? All I know for sure is Greed was to the north, Wrath was off the coast to the west and Lust was in the southern swamps. There’ve also been half-remembered comments about historical ties to Korvosa and Magnimar, but I can’t remember which was what in those cases.

All of those leave Turtelback vaguely in the middle between them. Do I remember right that Skull Dam was build by Greed? Does that mean his kingdom stretched south to reach Lust’s borders?

My players have been talking lately about urban characters and, just in case, I started flipping through my CotCT.

The primary roadblock I’m seeing, though, is the assumption that all the PCs are going to want to join the Guard. In the very, very general discussion on urban adventures we had, there was no mention of wanting to be part of the city guard. Instead ideas seemed to be skewed to burglars, college mages, and out-of-their-element barbarians or the like.

Assuming that Ileosa would even make the offer to these characters, what would I do when these characters say “no thanks”?

My favorite option right now is to replace Kroft with Orisini since he seems like a more key patron than the Field Marshall. Perhaps Grau could introduce them or, better yet, I could replace Grau *with* Orisini as the recovered drunk.

For those of you with play experience, is there anything I’m in danger of missing out on if I cut the Guard connection? Any suggestions for making sure I hit those points without that tie?

With different parts of Golarion keyed to different real world cultures including African, Egyptian, and Indian-themed regions, has there been any discussion on different demi-humans in those non-Eurocentric places?

My Pathfinder library is still pretty skimpy, but I was wondering if there was just a blanket idea that all PC races live in all regions or if the non-humans were modified (or replaced) to better fit the myths of each inspiring culture.

The short version of my sob story is that I had to move this past week and part of surviving that financial crunch involved cancelling my Pathfinder subscription.

I should be ready to resume by the end of the month, but by then I'll have missed issue 10. Sure I'll be going back and buying that issue when I get the chance, but I regret not having the .pdf as well ('cause I'm deploying soon and the more gaming stuff I have as .pdfs the more I can take with me).

Any advice?

Apparently, my Winzip program was only a "trial" and has expired. Since I can't imagine everyone here pays for a license to unzip files, I'm hoping someone can point me to another source.

How do y'all unzip your files?

This is a pretty long post so, following the good example of others, I’ve used spoiler tags to put my thoughts into manageable chapters.

One of the things I nerd over in my gaming is finding ways to make the fluff match the crunch. Not too long ago, I came to these boards for help in identifying the difference between wizards and sorcerers. For the sake of summary, this is what I came away with:

Now, I was quite happy with that theory until I started leafing through the Pathfinder books and noticed some elements which added to this basic premise. Schools of magic, I noticed, provide more fluff than I’d initially thought.

Pretty much like the Winds of Magic over at the Warhammer house, I started thinking of the schools of magic as actually drawing on different sources or at least different flavors of this magical energy. This model of arcane energy not only explains the schools, but could even give some rationalization behind the specialist bonuses granted in Pathfinder.

I could continue this line of thought into theories as to how divine magic is identifiable by school of magic, but I thought I’d stop here and get some feedback on the idea so far.

Does any of this not gel with the rules as written? Any ideas for where these eight “sources” of magic might come from that would give them a unique flavor?

There’s a lot of history behind Greyhawk and I’m pretty sure I and my players missed most of it. I’m thinking of taking advantage of the new edition to start from the beginning with a Greyhawk Season 1 campaign.

The Elemental Evil Slavers of the Giant Demonweb Pits sounds like a great campaign, but I wanted to touch bases with some real Greyhawk fans about some of your favorite not-to-be-missed Greyhawk moments.

When cutting and pasting encounters from these supermodules, what should I be sure to include and what would you recommend I leave out?

I’m also considering a campaign of other Greyhawk material that would allow me to use the non-super-related adventures such as Saltmarsh and the Tomb of Horrors. If you were putting together a campaign of those miscellaneous modules, what would you want to see included? What are the iconic Greyhawk modules I should make an effort to include? Is any of the later 2e stuff good? The Falconmaster Series, Fate of Istus, and the Howl from the North prelude to War modules seem interesting and world shaping, are they any good?

I've seen a lot of comments to the effect of how 4th Edition takes away from or doesn't allow for roleplaying. Now that I've had a chance to read the demo rules from Keep on the Shadowfell, I'm getting the exact opposite impression.

Before I post any arguments to these other comments I'm seeing, I wanted to find out exactly why some of you feel the way you do.

What is it about 4th edition that makes you think it's unfriendly to role playing?

I'm looking at a military deployment to the Horn of Africa towards the end of this summer. Any chance there are any gamers stationed out there waiting for me?