GentleGiant's page

From the people behind stop-animation hits like Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit!

Featuring Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, David Tennant, Salma Hayek and many more.

First trailer!
Link

Second trailer!
Link

Featurette on how it's made:
Link

I thought it could be interesting to see what kind of pre-painted miniatures there are out there for use with your RPG games.
I guess we all know that you can pick up various animals from toy stores to represent everything from horses over (giant) vermin/animals to dinosaurs.
I also came across a line of miniatures that has some cool monsters and dragons.
It's called "Knights" and I found at least one .com store who sold them, so they might be available everywhere.
Here's the link to a Danish toy store who sells them. The normal knight miniatures are too big for normal 25-28mm miniature play (but could maybe be used for giants or enlarged characters), but the monsters, like the minotaur and orcs (ogre substitute?) could be usable. The dragons definitely.
Anyway, click here.
I should note that there ARE other models in this line not represented on the page. I have taken some photos of some of them and I'll see about getting the photos online, so I can link them here.
The miniatures are listed as being 9 cm (3,54 inches) tall.

I thought the tutorial I made for making a transport case for painted (or pre-painted) minis might be of interest to the people here.
Now, this is mostly if you're interested in protecting your miniatures and don't want to pay a lot for a GW miniature case/Sabol Armytransport or similar items.
The tutorial is much more effective with actual pictures in it, so instead of writing it up here, I'll just link to the thread where I posted it in:
DIY Transport Case.

Bonus info:
On the second page of the thread I made a quick tutorial for a
"Dead simple light box for lighting your miniatures properly while photographing them for your online posting needs." ;-)

Trailer here.

You (in the U.S.) are allied with North Korea, right?
Well, Sarah Palin seems to think so... ;-)

Okay, so discussion in another thread sort of poked an idea that I've had for a while and now it prompted me to actually do something about it.
For several, varied reasons I've been wanting to try and compare some different salary levels between the U.S. and my own country, Denmark, just in a fairly non-scientific, curious and casual way.
I do need to know what would yield the best results before I jump into the comparison itself, so I need to ask you people something first:

What figure would yield the best comparison, salary before taxes or after taxes?

Seeing how the tax burden is rather different between the two countries, I'd guess before taxes. However, the numbers I have access to are mostly after taxes, so that would be easier for me to put up.

What I ultimately want to know, when I put the numbers up, is what "category" the various salary levels would be classified as (in the U.S.) and I'd love examples of what kind of job in the U.S. you'd have to make the various salaries (later on I might disclose what the Danish people who make the individual salaries actually do ;-) ).

So, first of all, before or after tax numbers?

What with the current job situation in the US I thought this might be of interest to some.
My web host just wrote in their newsletter that they're hiring across the board. More jobs should pop up throughout October.
Click here for their jobs page.

Anyone else having problems loading Facebook?

So, we're about to start up CotCT and I'm the last person in the group to come up with a character... and I'm kind of drawing a blank on what to play (I seem to be in a particularly uninspiring period of time in my life).
The 3 other party members are as follows:
Half-Giant* fighter/paladin (planned multiclass later on) - focused on charging, dazzling display later on and hitting hard with his two-handed weapon (takes the 2-handed fighter archetype).
Human cleric of Sarenrae.
Human monk (plans on taking some of the dazzling display feats too to take advantage of the Half-Giant's use of it to "power" some of his monk powers/feats).

*ported over from the previous campaign as explained below.

Some background for the campaign:
Our DM has seen his time diminishing rapidly (in the process of having a new house built, big promotion and a baby girl added to the mix), so his homebrew campaign is taking too much time to prepare for him. Instead of shelving the group entirely, he has opted to run an AP instead, but with a link to the old campaign.
We had been engaged in ye typical "find the special Macguffins and save the world before the bad guys do their evil thing" campaign. To tie it in with the new campaign he told us that the BBEG had secured the Macguffins and the only way to stop him was for the head of the 3 magic orders in the world to send us back in time and space to where the BBEG had originated from and stop him then and there. Thus the BBEG in CotCT is supposed to be the BBEG in the previous campaign.
Our options were to keep the characters we had (but dialed back to 1st level again) or create new characters who were linked/destined to help defeat the BBEG.
The Half-Giant has, so far, been the only one who wanted to keep his character. The monk player has just joined the group again (we were only 3 players in the previous campaign).
My previous character was a Human wizard (enchanter).

So, to get back to my quandary... what to play?
I'd like to be useful throughout the entire campaign, but also play an interesting character (I'm more focused on the concept than min/max'ing/optimizing).
So... a wizard/sorcerer seems like a natural 4th member of the group... but I can't seem to dredge up an interesting concept.
A rogue or bard could also be useful (city campaign, probably lots of social interaction etc. - although I'm actually playing a bard in another campaign (Council of Thieves)).
Maybe a second cleric (of another deity)?

This is where I'd like to reach out to all you creative people who might have some experience with the AP. Any suggestions?
If more info on the other characters is helpful, I can try to get some more out of them.

I hate to come across as a grumpy old man (I'm not THAT old), but I was just wondering whether some companies, who produce PFRPG supportive material, have been given express clearance to post signatures (promoting their companies) with their every post?
It has been posted several times that this is something you guys generally frown upon and the FAQ states:

Why can't I include a signature with my posts?

We're trying to keep the appearance of our messageboards as clean and streamlined as possible. Signatures that get repeated over and over on a page detract from the main conversation, and we'd prefer that you not manually insert them into your messages.

It's not that I don't want these companies to grow and thrive, but if this is a rule for regular posters, shouldn't it be a rule for companies too?

I've searched the Yahoo groups and the PCGen website, but can't seem to find any up to date info on how to add a new race to PCGen.
Specifically I'm trying to add the variant Tiefling races from Council of Thieves (even more specific, the Rakshasa variant).
Any help out there, I know some of you are active in the development of the program.

Okay, I'm going to tap into that dreadful stereotype of most gamers being overweight and see if there are any fellow "sufferers" out there.
I'm curious if there are any other posters who have had or are considering weight-loss surgery (whether gastric banding, bypass, sleeve etc.)?
I'm currently in the run-up phase to the surgery (gastric bypass) and you can never have too many supporters when it comes to life-altering surgery.
I know it's a touchy subject with a lot of people, whether from personal pride or the social stigma that still follows it around. It's often viewed as "the easy way out," which, if one would do just a little research, cannot be further from the truth. It's a tool that can help with the hardest part, losing the weight, while a very strict and healthy lifestyle must still be maintained afterwards.
I also know that, especially for those of you in the US, it can be a struggle to even get approved for the surgery, if your insurance is even going to cover it, or to find the money for it on your own.
But I want to share a bit of my story, maybe someone else can use it in a productive manner. :-)

I've always been a big guy. Not in an obese way, but I'm 6'6" and built solidly, with lots of natural muscle mass - the guy people came to first when they had to move heavy furniture around or to help move to another place. I've also been very active in sports, from soccer over European handball and basketball to American football most recently.
After a longer period with problems staying focused on my studies, stemming from my then undiagnosed psychiatric problems, I finally hit rock-bottom with a major depression back in 2002.
Stayed in bed for 3 months before finally dragging myself off to my doctor to have her confirm the depression.
Then followed several years where I tried a variety of psychopharma to, hopefully, help me out of the depression. Unfortunately, as anyone who has dealt with psychopharma knows, the drugs all had a common side effect... Severe weight gain.
Even though I still played football I continued to gain weight (not that my coach complained that much, I played offensive lineman, so I just became harder to get through ;-) ).
I've beaten the depression now, but have been given a new diagnosis, simple schizophrenia.
I've most likely had that for a long time and the symptoms can sometimes be mistaken for chronic depression disorder called dysthymia - which was what I was being given drugs for, even though it wasn't necessary.
Another side effect of my long-term use of the drugs is the fact that they have pretty much smashed my feeling of satiety, or at least have pushed it so far that I rarely feel physically full. The consequense of that is, of course, over eating (with frequent binge eating episodes).
I've tried to lose weight lots of times and with the most common methods. I've been to a life-style camp (yes, we called it fat camp! ;-) ) twice and lost 40 lbs each time, only to gain it all (and more) back again within 3-6 months.

So, last fall I decided that enough was enough. I thoroughly researched the whole spectrum of weight-loss surgeries and through my doctor got an appointment at a dietician (I also knew from my visit to the life-style camp that the scales at my doctor's office wouldn't be able to weigh me), which also happened to coincide with my doctor telling me, after some tests, that I was in the pre-stage of type II diabetes...
Yay! :-(
Got to the dietician and "jumped" on the scales... 378 lbs!
Yikes, that was 67 lbs more than when I was weighed last time, at the time of leaving the life-style camp back in the summer of 2007.
No wonder all my joints were aching and my back kept kicking me every time I had to walk more than 200 yards.
As I said above, I'm now in the run-up phase to the surgery, where I have to lose 8% of my heighest body weight (the 378 lbs above). I have to lose it before week 18, where my surgery is scheduled. I'm trying to lose it faster, though, because if I do I can be put on an emergency/cancellation list if another patient decides to bail or hasn't met the surgery weight goal at their appointed time.
I'm down 17 lbs so far... still another 15 lbs to go to be on the safe side.

Link to tv segment here.
So, according to an elected official, republican Bob Marshall, children with disabilities are born like that because of the wrath of god over abortion and, based on that, state support for health clinics should be removed.
Also, Virginia governor Bob McDonnell has used an executive order to cut text that banned discrimination against state workers for their sexual orientation.

Is this mindset acceptable in US politics in 2010?

Any news about when the playtest will begin?
I'm especially looking forward to the new classes, since we'll be starting a new campaign very soon (Council of Thieves) and I'm really itching to try/playtest a Cavalier or Inquisitor.
Latest info I could find from Jason was from back in August.

If there is another place where we can give feedback on any errors/omissions we find in the book, then I apologize for this thread.
Just wanted to give people a place where they can give feedback, so further printings and the pdf can be as perfect as possible.
Anyway, I have only briefly skimmed through the pdf and I found this error:
page 459:
"Magic items that take damage in excess of half their total hit points, but not more than their total hit points, gain the ??? condition, and might not function properly (see the Appendix)."
The ??? indicates a missing word.

Also, as has been mentioned elsewhere, the class bookmarks are out of whack.

Okay, so an interesting situation came up during our last session. The party is currently exploring some tunnels and happened upon a Gelatinous Cube. The party fighter has Shall Not Pass and wanted to use it on the Cube, as it tried to slither over and engulf him and another party member.
This led to a discussion about whether it would work on such an amorphous creature, which could just "flow/slither/blob" around the stopping attack since it fills up the entire hallway?

We came up with a very situational solution in the given instance, giving the fighter his AoO and, because of the feat, a reflex save to avoid being engulfed (which he wouldn't have received if he had used a normal AoO).

Any other perspectives, thoughts, criticism, comments or accolades?

I don't know if anyone can answer this, but I thought I'd try anyway.
My fellow (local) gamers and I have decided to order the PfRPG book from Amazon.co.uk, since, with shipping and everything, it appears to be the cheapest deal (I'll personally subscribe to the RPG line once the main book is released so I can choose to start with the Bestiary and DM Screen, but that's beside the point).
One thing that made me pause a bit, though, was when I saw the release date on Amazon.co.uk.
September 2nd...
Both Amazon.de and Amazon.com have August 19th as their release dates.
Could this simply be an outdated release date? Or might it actually be right?
I know that Amazon get their books through the usual retailer channels, I just found it odd that the dates are different.

EDIT:
Another question.
I'm also trying to figure out some shipping costs and I was wondering whether you have the exact weight of the PfRPG book?

Well, unlike the last Bestiary preview, the powers that be have actually disguised the names of the monsters this time around. So, what are we dealing with here?
My guess:
Kyton (Chain Devil), Pit Fiend, Balor and Oni/Ogre Mage.

Former Titans (and Ravens) QB Steve 'Air' McNair has been found shot to death in Nashville, TN.

Just wanted to give a heads-up that I'm getting a broken image file when trying to load the large version of the picture in today's Blog (the catacombsfight one).
Tried 3 different browsers, so it's not a browser error.

Okay, get some popcorn and sit back in your favourite chair for a little more than an hour presentation of Google Wave!
If you're too impatient to sit through the presentation, then you can read this blog article by Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly Books), which summarizes some of the key features (however, it's much better to see the whole video presentation, of course).
This could very well be the way online communication is handled shortly, so it could be bye bye e-mails, IMs etc.
Not only that, but with more extensions, developed for the open source platform, it could even be used as a handy Virtual Table Top. Just imagine something like RPTools' MapTool as an extension!

Full article here: Click

Lieutenant Colonel Victor J. Fehrenbach, a fighter weapons systems officer, has been flying the F-15E Strike Eagle since 1998. He has flown numerous missions against Taliban and al-Qaida targets, including the longest combat mission in his squadron's history. On that infamous September 11, 2001, Lt. Col. Fehrenbach was handpicked to fly sorties above the nation's capital. Later he flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has received at least 30 awards and decorations including nine air medals, one of them for heroism, as well as campaign medals for Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He is now a flight instructor in Idaho, where he has passed on his skills to more than 300 future Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force weapons systems officers.

Remember to see the video at the end of the article.

Now, why was Lieutenant Colonel Victor J. Fehrenbach fired?
He's gay.

Normally, I'm not a big fan of anything (real world, present day) military, I find it a sad testament to the violent nature of humanity that we still need to engage in wars.
That said, I find it even more appaling that someone who has served dutifully and honorable for 18 years (just two years shy of being able to retire with a full pension) is being fired because of the backward ideology that homosexual members of society is a "danger" to the armed forces.
Sickening I say.

Help out the troops!

Way more than just a preview of the upcoming Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, this 16-page mini-manual of monstrosities shows off new rules for monsters straight from the Pathfinder RPG, a rundown of just 257 of the monsters you can expect to appear in September's Bestiary, and updated statistics for 13 classic monsters—including the allip, carytid column, faire dragon, and shadow mastiff—not to mention a few other surprises slipped in there.

I think it's great that Paizo is including the very rare Faire Dragon in the Bonus Bestiary!

Long has this creature been overlooked by most people.
For those who don't know about it, here's a little bonus info before the Bestiary hits your local game shop:

Faire Dragons are most often seen at various faires, especially ren-faires, where they mingle with the general population in disguise. The most common disguises for the Faire Dragon are either as a rotund barmaid with extensive amounts of cleavage visible or as a bespectacled and bearded foppish buffoon clad all in suede.
However, their protruding tails often give them away on closer inspection.

Disclaimer: I apologize to any regular ren-faire goers for using somewhat crass stereotypes. It's all meant in good fun. :-D

Just letting you know that apparently there's something wrong with the sample map being showcased on the blog - the one from Map Pack: Caverns.
Neither the "thumbnail" picture is showing, nor the larger picture being linked to (says they contain errors, don't know if it's just the .jpEg name, although that shouldn't be a problem in most browsers).

When I try to go to the Pathfinder blog I just get pushed to the Pathfinder store or the Pathfinder frontpage (no difference really).
I tried logging out and deleting my cookies... no difference.

Now, the title of this thread might seem a bit strange, but I went with the add-on name that I use in Firefox, which I think is the thing that does what this thread is about...
Right. When I hover the mouse over a thread link, e.g. like in the newest messageboards messages on the blog front page, I used to get the first couple of lines of the first message from that thread in a popup ALT window.
As I sit here, it shows the ALT message when I hover over the "Website Feedback" link above this window (Questions, comments, suggestions and feedback about the Paizo.com website and messageboards.), but I'm not getting it elsewhere. Now, the above is a "real" ALT message, whereas the other kind isn't. However, I still get these popups on e.g. ENWorld when I hover over thread links.
So, like I said, I used to get these a couple of days ago, but no more. I don't know if this is because I upgraded Firefox or because something has changed on the site (the Firefox add-on hasn't been updated, so it should function the same - and it seems to be compatible with the newest Firefox). Since I still get the popup on other sites, I'm thinking that it might be because of some tinkering around here.
Seems like Gary has been busy the last couple of days... at least if one is to go with all the "site down for maintenance" pages I've loaded over the last two days. :-)
Anyways, any ideas, info, flinging of poo?

(Sorry for the rambling!)

I was just browsing some of my favourite art sites and came across a picture linked to Pathfinder. Check out Eva Widermann's new art blog for a interesting sketch:
http://evawidermann.blogspot.com/

I'm looking for some help from the many people with extensive Dungeon archives.
I'd like to get a collection of adventures that are suited for running at a small local con held yearly here in town. These adventures should be smaller ones that are manageable to run in a roughly 6 hour time slot (but should also take at least 3-4 hours to complete).
I'd like suggestions from the pages of Dungeon so I can buy and download the magazines containing these adventures.
I'm guessing most of them would be Side Treks, but there might be some smaller regular adventures that could be used.
Level should probably be 10 and down (might have to run them to people with less than encyclopedia knowledge of the rules).

So, any suggestions?
I'd love a small synopsis of the adventures people suggest, as to why they're fun/scary/silly/etc. and useable as a one shot scenario.

Hey Gary (or anyone else who knows)!
Is it possible to link to a single post in a thread so that only that post shows up when people follow the link?
I found that you could use the "recent posts" to link to a single post in a thread, but it's more akin to those "link to a specific place on the page" links.
From time to time I'm interested in providing a link to my players where just a single post would be all I needed and where reading the rest of the thread might give out spoilers or some such to them.
Of course, they might just click on the thread name and read it all anyway, but at least by linking to a single, isolated post, there's less of a chance of them happening on extra info not for their eyes.
Also, besides the "recent posts" page, are there other methods of getting hold of single post id numbers?

Hopes that all makes sense... lots of links in that text. ;-)

Do you know anyone who still play AD&D (2nd edition, call it whatever you like)?
I'm primarily interested in knowing whether there's still a market for all of my old AD&D stuff I have stored away.
I've got lots and lots of books in good conditions (used to be a collector type) and I was hoping that I could sell most (if not all) of it for a low price and know that someone would actually get some use out of it.

I couldn't really find a forum that catered specifically to art in RPGs (the other "art" forum is catering to movies, music and books), so I figured I'd put up a thread here to show off some art done by a friend of mine.
Now, I've been mercilessly pushing him to start drawing more and more because I know his big dream is to make some kind of living out of his art.
He's currently working construction to pay the bills (with a pregnant wife and 2 kids in the house already it's sort of necessary), but I'd love for him to be able to further his art education in the future.
Anyway, I put up some of his more recent pictures on my own homepage, just to have a kind of fledgeling online portfolio until we can sit down and do a proper site for him (his wife has already bought the domain name for him).
On to the pictures then!
Here's the link to the page in question
And, yes, it's D&D related, most of the drawings are of earlier characters of character ideas he's had (3 of them are even character concepts for his Cleric of Iomedae that he's going to play in my Pathfinder campaign starting in two weeks - pictures 6-8 on the page). :-D

Any feedback (good and bad) is welcome, especially from those with ties to the RPG industry! ;-)
Also, feel free to ask questions, I'll try my best to answer those I can and then forward the others to my friend.

For those quick enough, you can remove the 2 in the url to see some older drawings of his

I thought I'd make a centralized thread where people can post the group they've assembled for playing through the RotR Adventure Path.
There are a couple of threads where people have posted their group, but I wanted to make "One Thread to Bind Them All..." or some such. ;-)

Feel free to post as much as you like (e.g. backgrounds, how the party met etc.)

Well, I'll start off with the group I'll be running through the AP.

Baelynn and Gaelynn Blackwater
Fraternal twins of Chelish descent.
From a small noble family whose seat has been in the southern part of the Fogscar Mountains (think slightly Scottish setting, with their keep at the edge of a large Loch (i.e. Blackwater)).

Baelynn - LN Human male Wizard (will most likely multiclass to sorcerer and then pick up the Ultimate Magus PrC)
Gaelynn - LG Human male Cleric (Iomedae - Glory and War domains, Longsword and Power Attack/Cleave feat chain)
???? - Human male Fighter or Ranger (undecided as of now). Probably the son of the guard captain of the Blackwater household or a cousin of the Blackwater family.

The Blackwater patriarch backed out of some shady dealings recently and has thus caused a lot of trouble for the family, including an assasination attempt. The twins were therefore sent to Sandpoint to lay low and at the same time follow up on some rumors that the assasination attempt had ties to the town. The third character is either going with them or is already in Sandpoint (if he's a cousin).

As is evident I only have 3 players, so I'm contemplating putting in a NPC, although I've already beefed up the characters a bit (their stats have bonuses of +15, +14 and +16 respectively, also bumped the skill point total up one category (i.e. fighters, clerics etc. now have 4 skill points instead of 2), full starting money and one of the feats from the Player's Guide as a bonus feat).

For the last two days or so the servers seem to have been working very slowly (for me at least). Both the main site and the messageboards (don't know if they're hosted on the same server(s)) can sometimes take up to a full minute or more to connect to. Other, non-paizo, sites come up fine, so it's not a local connection issue.
Don't know if I'm the only one who's had this problem. :-)
(maybe it's the all the downloads of the free Pathfinder Player's Guide causing the problem ;-))

Is there an ETA on when the latest issues of Dungeon are going to be available to purchase as pdfs?
Also, what about the online supplements (haven't been updated since January)?

Just downloaded and perused the Paizo 2007 Summer Catalog.
There are a few spreads from some of the Pathfinder (and Gamemastery modules) books, giving us another small sneak peek at what's to come.
Now, the interesting thing about the catalog (i.e. the pdf version) is that they've used images of the whole spread (i.e. 2 full pages) and overlapped them with covers etc. So when you scroll up and down you can sometimes see the part that's hidden underneath the overlaying graphic.
Now, I don't know if Paizo are too keen on sharing this already, but I took a screenshot of one of those pages, while it was "loading," and it showed some extra monsters in the bestiary section (on a size comparison drawing). I could upload it so people can see it... if the fab guys at Paizo wouldn't mind, of course. :-D
Another thing that piqued my interest... on page 5 of the catalogue there's what looks like a goblin (with wings???) riding some kind of dinosaur!