Illessa's page

This adventure's gonna rock!

But I'm biased since I'm a patron.

The mock up art is from one of the side trek adventures in the Second Darkness AP, just FYI.

Guess I should have qualified my previous post by saying I'm a hideously biased patron too (though sadly after deciding to make this my first senior patronage, work has been so busy that I've barely been able to contribute until now). Seriously though, I've run two playtest groups through it and it's been an absolute blast. It's wonderful to watch OD products grow so I certainly second Sinvel's recommendation if you've never been a patron. Keep an eye on Open Design and when a product that interests you comes around, take the plunge!

Squee!

It's so exciting to see this hit the product listings. From it's current state it looks like it's going to be an incredibly atmospheric and creepy adventure (though if you can prevent your players from singing "It's beginning to look a lot like fishmen" repeatedly through the first session you're a better GM than me).

Congrats Rob, on such a well-deserved position! Shame the move back Stateside makes it unlikely we'll see you at Gencon/Paizocon UK again (unless it's as a member of staff!) Just as well Pete got you to sign our copy of the Campaign Setting at Gencon UK last year :P.

Ah, so this is happening elsewhere. I picked up my copy from my FLGS just as the owner was unpacking all the copies (our timing is awesome). He was incredibly pissed off as he'd ordered 30 (and triple checked with them days before shipping, as he'd had a load of interest), but Esdevium only sent 8. Since he had 3 definite preorders and 3 of us standing there chomping at the bit to get copies he had only 2 left to put on the shelves. This was Patriot Games in Sheffield, so hardly Manchester or London, but hardly middle-of-nowhere either.

I'll also chip in in saying it's really worthwhile playing the first volume if you can persuade your players. In particular the first volumes of Rise of the Runelords and Legacy of Fire have resulted in some fantastic roleplaying experiences for me, and when the RP gives way to the fighting, the relatively high difficulty of Paizo adventures means those lower levels fly by pretty fast.

Having said that, I think it's fair to say that all four APs thus far have used the first book for scene-setting more than anything and don't advance the plot crazy amounts. So it's possible you could read through them, pull out the major plot points that need to be covered and coalesce them into your own version that only covers levels 3-4...

Another call for different platforms here. I can't afford to upgrade to an contract that can get me an iPhone for a while, and when I can I'd much rather get an Android phone...

Course I could just write my own app but I don't need yet another half-done project.

Wolfthulhu wrote:

Go actually PLAY it and then come back and tell us how utterly usless you were.

Either that's a typo or it's seriously crossing the line.

Things get heated occasionally but, around here, we still refrain from calling eachother "useless".

Hydro wrote:

I still don't know if it's balanced, but that it's even feasible just goes to show how much raw power the cleric is still packing. As someone said earlier, if you asked to trade your fighter's feats (and, in PRPG, weapon/armor training) for a full spellcasting progression people would think you were b&*%*!&-wacko insane.

Why should the fighter lose his weapon/armor training? The holy warrior cleric still attains his channel energy class feature.
The holy warrior is propably more powerful in PRPG than he was in 3.5, since he could easily get a fighter BAB by casting divine power, which now simply grants additional bonusus on top of his BAB.

Like I say though, I'm not sure it is, the need for Wisdom (and Cha if you keep channel energy), prevents a cleric from upping his physical stats as much as a fighter would, they also can't get anywhere near the fighters damage output due to lack of fighter-only feats and weapon training (this is the problem that the cleric in my LoF game runs into, every other character can outdamage her with ease when they want to, and she tends to just ping off DR unless it's magic or good, OK so she could optimise more and buff more, but she's certainly not built poorly).

[Edit] Ninjaiguana just pointed out to me that a PFRPG holy warrior can get scary to-hits due to Divine Power stacking, now that it doesn't adjust your BAB. Hmm, this needs more thought...

One advantage of the medium armour is I think it sets up a very simple and elegant way to run the full gamut of iconic clerical-types and differentiate between them via a simple set of alternate class features:

Base cleric (or call them Adventuring Priests, or Battlefield Medics or whatever): d8s, medium armour, medium bab, two domains
Holy warrior: d10s, heavy armour, full bab, no domains (I know people have said this is broken, but we have one in our LoF campaign and she's been absolutely fine, wading into the fray with the two specialist fighters, but never outshining them at all, if you want to nerf them further you could always reduce their spells per day or something as well).
Cloistered Cleric: d6s, light armour (or no armour), poor bab, some kind of handy bonus (four domains? More skill points? More spells? 's all good).

I don't know... I like it.

Also sorry to bring this up, but Thurgon, can you please cut down on the hyperbole on other threads? I understand you're upset, and this thread shows there are others who are as well, but comments like the one you made on the Edition Wars thread are just going to get people's backs up. You haven't "lost" the edition wars, 3.5 is right there if you want it and always will be, as is the option of playing PFRPG with Clerics house-ruled any number of ways (give them Heavy Armour Prof, Take away the weapon prof, give them Turn Undead for free, or hell just use the old cleric wholesale with the new domains and spells). Not to mention that as long as you can play any character concept you could play in 3.5, and as long as you can use 3.5 adventures and splat in PFRPG and vice versa, you can't possibly claim that backwards-compatibility is "none-existent".

Sorry to bring that up here, but didn't want to bring the subject up on a thread that's supposed to be about people making amends for all the harsh words and hurt feelings edition wars arguments have caused.

...Not to mention the fact that Clerics now get some pretty amazing Domain abilities (that Travel one is particularly sweet)...

How many of those currently praising the removal of heavy armor proficiency from clerics either:
1) playtested a cleric?
2) currently play a cleric?
3) plan on playing a cleric in Pathfinder?

If I did take armour proficiency there's no way I'd take it at 1st level, you won't be able to afford full plate till third level min anyway (and that's assuming there's nothing else you want to buy first, the first grand that I get always tends to go on a cloak of resistance), until then breastplate's a way better bet than any of the other heavy armours. I'd consider delaying heavy armour prof till 5th level if I was going to take it and did have better stuff to get at early levels and rely on none-magical breastplate (to avoid wasting cash) and shield of faith.

Renba's actually a battlefield medic type, and he wasn't wearing full-plate when he was 3.5. He certainly isn't now. He was more interested in Tower Shield Proficiency than Heavy Armour if anything. Healing people from behind cover ftw :P.

..snip..
But now the Cleric basically faces a 3 feat tax, factoring in Turn Undead, along with Selective Channeling and Heavy Armor Proficiency. Channel Energy is now "pick one of the three things at a time you could do with it in the Beta, but actually just two unless you've paid part of your feat tax like every evil, vile, nasty little cleric has to".

Turn Undead? Screw it, stuff running away is annoying anyway.

Heavy Armour Proficiency? Feh. I played through the incredible meat grinder that is Age of Worms with a Favoured Soul of Kord. She didn't have a spectacular dex and Favoured Souls don't get heavy armour proficiency. I never bothered taking it as a feat, and guess what? She front-lined it with the best of them just fine.

Wintergreen wrote:

You've got your copy of the book already!? Jealous!

I got it literally minutes after my FLGS got its delivery. Quite lucky too - the whole shop only got 3 copies since Esdevium only ordered a small amount of books. And now they can't any more since the first run is sold out.

But yeah, I'll get acquainted with the rules, join the PF society, and also head to GameCon in Manchester if I can. Anyone know what that's like?

Popping in as someone with the book making a Cleric for CoT and converting a cleric PFS character, I'm perfectly happy with the change. They're both clerics of not-particularly-warlike deities (Milani and Nethys respectively, well Milani's certainly not peaceful but she's hardly about knights on the battlefield), so I really wasn't visualising them in heavy armour anyway, and I've found that's true for clerics of most deities. I just don't see the clergy of most gods tromping about in full-plate, even deities like Saranrae I tend to see the clerics in a breastplate or something similarly lower-profile with the paladin in full-plate standing at their side.

Of course there are various gods for whom this is appropriate (Gorum and Iomedae certainly spring to mind). Perhaps the War domain should have granted heavy armour proficiency to cover these guys, but at the end of the day, if that's the kind of cleric you want to play then the expenditure of one feat when you get one every other level really isn't that big a deal.

Kinda implied by the fact that Ninjaiguana has agreed to GM, but I'll be there next year barring calamities between then and now!

A fair few of the guys I play with have been regretting not coming this year, so hopefully we'll be a full contingent of 5-10 people next time :D.

Great Beyond is so tempting. I love the planes. So is the Princes of Darkness. I really trust Paizo when it comes to the planes and their denizens. They seem to know what I like.

If you can't afford the campaign setting you could always go for the Gazetteer, there's a fair bit of cross-over so if you intend to get the CS eventually I guess it might end up feeling a waste, but we still use mine fairly frequently for casual player reference and checking major facts faster than digging through the CS.

Yeah, so Pharasma is pretty damn anti-undead, few excerpts from Gods & Magic:

"She opposes undeath as a desecration of the memory of the flesh and a corruption of a soul's path on its journey to her judgement."

"The church despises undead as abominations to the natural order, and all priests follow this belief without question; creating undead is forbidden and controlling existing undead is frowned upon."

Also, her holy text The Bones Land in a Spiral includes sections on how to dispose of the dead in order to prevent undeath, and one of the abilities of the Pharasma-linked magic item in G&M the icon of the midwife is to consecrate a body so it cannot be animated as an undead if buried within 24 hours.

It's worth noting, that she's in no way anti negative energy or necromancy though. It even specifically mentions "White necromancers" who worship Pharasma and study necromancy without using the creation of undead, which I guess links into the death domain thing too.

Don't see any mention of that Groetus thing that your player mentioned, both G&M and the campaign setting say little more than he's the uncaring god of the End Times worshiped mostly by solitary mad-men and is represented by and possibly resides in the moon over the Boneyard.

I like your ideas for how it's going to go down :). If U or ZK don't fit or would cause plot issues have you considered an Archdevil or Demon Lord? Geryon (Archdevil of snakes & heresy) or Orcus (Demon Lord of undead & necromancy) spring to mind. Ooh, or Sifkesh, Demon Lord of heresy & suicide, she specifically tries to seduce priests into betraying their religion in ways that would cause their church's reputation lingering damage, which creating a cult that creates warehouses full of undead certainly has the potential to do :). There's more info on her and Orcus in the fantastic Demon Lords article in PF18 if you're interested...

The player and I have been conversing via email. He thinks that there are souls that inhabit the undead and he sees his cult as being a "liberator" of sorts. Intelligent undead (that can't be controlled) are resurrected, or destroyed if necessary. Unintelligent undead are kept in a warehouse awaiting some future use. One of his arguments for this approach is that Pharasma's holy text talks about what happens when the last soul departs the Prime Material plane. Apparently there's another entity (starts with a "G") who's waiting for that to happen so they can perform some act. And his cult thinks the act is to destroy the world. By keeping an undead around, the last soul will never depart the plane.

The god that begins with a G I can help with as I was reading The Great Beyond a couple of days ago ;). That would be Groetus, he takes the form (or has some association with, or something, his status as an ancient, mysterious and mostly unworshipped god of the end times makes all this rather fuzzy) of a moon in a decaying orbit around the Boneyard (Pharasma's realm). Whenever the moon gets too close a soul of an avowed atheist is sent up from the Graveyard of Souls and is consumed, which causes it to move away again. No one knows what will happen if it ever reaches Pharasma's Spire in the centre of the Boneyard but it's probably Not Good.

Hope that's helpful, mostly it seems that he's dead-set on keeping Groetus away he should be brushing up on his philosophical arguments and converting as many people as possible to atheism in order to increase the number of souls available to keep Groetus buffered :P. Even going for the "Last soul on earth" thing, keeping mindless undead wouldn't help as mindless undead don't have souls, they're essentially automatons animated and empowered by negative energy. Intelligent and incorporeal do have souls, albeit ones that generally get twisted by the influence of the negative energy plane.

Obviously all the above is just my personal knowledge of Golarion, at the end of the day, you're the GM and if you want to play about with Pharasma, Groetus, or the way undead work, you should go for it :).

Made it to the afternoon session, and I witnessed a PC death in the Styes....

Obituary:
Name of PC: Merisiel
Day Job: 'Pathfinder Iconic'
Cause of Death: Poison arrow trap, whilst chasing 'The Monkey' home to the lair of The Organ-grinder
Real Cause of Death: The twisted genius that is Richard Pett
<Cut>

And I hear that, whilst the adventure was never published, it may well become available at some point :).

Fantastic weekend, special thanks to Wintergreen and everyone else who helped with the organisation, all the players I had the honour of adventuring with and my wonderful GMs: Ted, Rich and Frenchwolf (twice). Oh and to Ben for writing a scenario that truly made me fear for my character's life :P.

I'd agree with Paul that I'd prefer to have something more social/light/drop-in-drop-out in slot 3. I'll freely admit I dropped out of slot 3 because I just can't hack 12 hours of nothing but D&D, especially after the rather intense Styes game; if there'd been some light board-games or other silly and not too taxing activities, I could definately have gone for that rather than just sneaking off to the pub :).

Oh, I can't remember who was asking for a link now, but Pete's aborted diary of my CotCT game can be found here.

Here's to next year!

Huh... is anyone else in Lakeside getting a free upgrade to a room in the Conference Centre? Just got a phonecall saying that I'm getting one, as is Ninjaiguana...

I'll see everyone tomorrow! Getting exciting now :).

I guess I might subscribe eventually. Right now, it's too expensive for me.

Of course, I'm pretty pissed about the fact that I either have to pay about twice the price for the book because of shipping, or pay extra for the PDF which should be free or at least really cheap.

And it looks like the other books will be heavy enough to push combined subscription shipments over the weight limit, which means that the rest of the books are basically their own shipment, with extra shipping costs.

Be glad you're not an international customer, I guess. Not only have mine been taking longer to get here (used to be two weeks every single time, now it's often a month and I occasionally get two shipments arrive simultaneously despite being dispatched weeks apart), but I'm getting dinged corners pretty much every time. This month was especially fun being soaking wet at one end to the point that it was starting to disintegrate. Fortunately the water damage to the books themselves was relatively minimal, but still :(. Just as well I'm a gamer not a collector and don't care about the condition of things so long as their readable and not falling apart. Stupid postal service.

Neil Spicer for me, I'm a fan of fey when they're done well, and I admit any mention of Pathfinder-style Gnomes tends to cause me to break out in very undignified squeeing, so I'd buy the module in a heartbeat...

Cpt_kirstov wrote:

I'm guessing that they load the new picture with the same title name as the placeholder, that way they don't have to fix links all over the place

That's how it's been done in the past. But if it's just the artwork without branding and titles and such it will be under a new name entirely.

*waits*
*hasn't spent the past 10 minutes typing in random guesses as to what the URL might be, oh no*
*tries some more variations on http://paizo.com/image/content/PathfinderChronicles/PZO9210-SOMETHING.jpg*
*has sneaking suspicion "PZO9210" might not be right anyway*
*sulks*

I'm totally up for it! I'm can think of two people I know who'll say yes without hesitation, and at least half a dozen more possibles if I prod my AP groups.
We're all in Sheffield, so count this as a vote for as far north as possible, if that's Brum, that's pretty manageable (I could try to entice with you over here, with all our University contacts, since we're all "Old guard" RP society members, but I'm guessing Yorkshire is a bit far for most :). Reading a la Gen Con would be OK, once you start getting closer to London it starts getting a bit pricey for us (though hopefully by then I'll have a decent job, rather than being in post-redundancy financial uncertainty).
I'm happy to take on any delegated duties too, I'm not great as a primary organiser, but I'm always willing to chase up whatever needs doing to get these things happening!

In the order I see them in the list, I'd have to express my love for:
key of closed doors
lens of the runethief
veil of the midnight vigil
hurricane gloves
last leaves of the autumn dryad (this is the only one I have reservations about, but the idea and flavour are just so cool I can overlook the mechanical quirks)

Honorable mentions:
temporal bracers (attempting a time-based item in under 200 words for a competition? That's gutsy, and barring a couple of minor issues they're pretty elegant).
horn of the dark hunt
twintone flute

The rules could be cleaned up, but overall I think a lot of people missed some of the original description. I see a lot of questions about how spells and sight effects will effect the user's sight, when the description clearly states that anything that effects sight effects the user normally. It also clearly states that you can dismiss the swarm at will, and that when they are so dismissed, they are permanently gone.

Actually it's probably the use of the word "Released" over the more typical "Dismissed" which is making everyone miss that one... now I've got images in my head of the poor orphaned schools of eye fish floating morosely around Golarion.

Indeed. With the interweb at most of our fingertips, I have no idea how the publishers of those guides still turn a profit.

Some companies seem to be trying to counteract the loss of sales due to internet guides by trying to create books that do double-duty as coffee-table/art-books. I mean my housemate picked up the limited edition guide for Final Fantasy 12 despite having already completed the game (and not particularly liking it) because it was a big shiny hardback and was just so damn pretty...

Did you check out the article in PF #4? Its been a while since i read it, and I think it was mostly on Stone giants, but I know it mentioned how they interact with some other types of giants

I have had nothing to do with the books.

Masuka is so funny in season 3. He does get all super series... and then he...

Damn... how do you insert a spoiler into a post?

The books are atrocious, really not worth reading, poor prose (the guy seems to be obsessed with alliteration, it gets old fast), two dimensional supporting characters, and some really bizarre plot points. The series changed quite a bit from day one (including the ending of the first series, after which they mostly diverged from the books plot except for some very loose points) which was a smart move.

I agree series one is by far the best, I think both series 2 and 3 had issues of meandering around a lot and then wrapping everything up really quickly. Especially series three, it just didn't engage me at all until episode 10, where I finally started sitting up and paying attention, only to realise that they were going to have to wrap the whole thing up in two episodes.

Sadly, all the assets in world didn't stop Lila from being incredibly annoying...

WormysQueue wrote:

magdalena thiriet wrote:

...being a powerful sorceress has not "liberated" Seoni from being defined by male perception so it must be ok then, one IS supposed to be defined by male perception.

Question: How are Eva Widerman's illustrations of Shelyn, Calistria, the Thrall of Malcanthet or her Pirate Chick different from Seoni? Especially with regards to your statement of the latter being defined by male perception?

...they don't appear on Paizo Christmas cards. That's the only difference I note between the pics. Which then forces us to question about generic portrayal of women in Paizo art...

I was at Gen Con UK with Dragnmoon and Callum as well, so yes, another voice to the fact that Eva Widermann is a fantastic artist, lovely person and ridiculously good looking, but that's all beside the point. I'm guessing WormysQueue's question was regarding male perception vs the fact that these illustrations were all drawn by a female artist (note, I'm not giving my opinion on this, I don't really have time to write a fully considered response)...

(The description on page 20 under body count does indicate that up to 5000 lives could be saved by the pc's actions).

another addition to the many kudos you have recieved . with one exception: the BODY COUNT section ;if the party completes every one of the scenarios the BODY COUNT only adds up to 2800 ( A=200, B=700, C=400, D=00, E=500, F-G = 1000) these add up to 2800 exactly so how does the party get as high as 3600 ?

Did I miss something or was a very large award omitted?

if you could send me an E-mail reply that would be nice.

2} The whole Seoni is totally unreal thing totally bugs me, not because I like to stand up for fictional characters but because I know a woman who is almost identical in shape to her, though I don't know Seoni's height, and this woman has coppery hair, no tattoos, some piercings. But the point stands, thats naturally her shape, there may be an argument for seoni having unnatural bouyancy, but that's a maybe exotic use of prestidigitation. If modern can use tape, why wouldnt a mage use a cantrip? Also, the 0-level pseudo bra has immediate combat benefits, i.e. sports bra but vastly superior.

I'm with Firbolg, he could do well (he certainly seems to have an enthusiasm for the part, I vaguely remember him being decent in Ruby in the Smoke, and I trust Stephen Moffat's judgement), but I was kind of hoping for the sublime Paterson Joseph

Okay, that makes sense, but brings up another question. You say that the character has to spend 20x as much time to perform the action? Whoa, that's a big multiplier. I can see how this option might streamline gameplay, but it seems to do so with quite a sacrifice in game time. If it's an action that normally just takes one round, it would suddenly take two turns! I think that as a player I would opt to roll a few times and as a DM I would encourage that and maybe bend the rules downward a bit on the multiplier.

Intuitively, taking search checks as an example the usual rolled search check is like looking for your missing keys when you're late for work, you're trying to be thorough but you're also trying to be quick, so luck plays a big role. Taking 10 is looking for them when you've got no distractions or major time worries, you can be methodical and cautious and if you're smart you'll find what you're looking unless it's been hidden somewhere really obscure. Taking 20 on the other hand, is going all CSI on the place :), pulling out the furnishings, looking under the flooring, generally going over everything inch by inch with a fine toothed comb until you're certain that there's nothing you could possibly have missed. It gives you guarantees, but it's going to take you some time! Similarly if you're making a knowledge check it's the difference between recalling what you know off the top of your head and going to a library to do research on the subject.

[edit]ahh, never leave a reply window open for a couple of hours, you'll be ninjed :). Yeah I completely forgot about the AD&D one minute combat rounds, that would make things take an excessively long time :). There's no real equivalent to the old turns in 3e, anything that can't be easily expressed in terms of 6-second rounds are just given in real time eg. spell durations are written in round, minute, ten minute, or hour increments...

agreed with Hsuperman, we did a lot of dice rolling in my game before the fighter eventually beat Krojun.
I also ditched the usual nat 1 = auto fail rule for the Sredna fort saves, there are few things so anti-climatic as an early fall to the 1 in 20 roulette...

Anyone out there ever actually play Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader? Always wondered about that one.

Any reason why Planescape: Torment is not on that list? That's quite possibly one of the very best BioWare titles, if not best RPGs, ever.

You picked the wrong system for Western *D&D* style RPGs. PS3 being a Japanese system makes most of their RPGs Japanese Style.. *Final Fantasy like* Which I personally hate.. But you can find plenty of those.. they all look the same...

That said, there haven't been any decent JRPGs out for the PS3 outside of Japan either... hohum... the only semi-decent RPGs so far have been Fallout 3, which is definately not suitable for kids, Elder Scrolls:Oblivion which I really don't rate story-wise (don't kill me, it's a great game for running around and doing whatever you fancy, but I thought the plot was dire) and Folklore, which might be suitable depending on maturity. It's only got two playable characters and you play them seperately, but the characters and NPCs are interesting, the storyline is involved, it's visually quite unique. The only problems are that it can be a little slow to unfold (the cutscenes are in a moving comic book style, so takes a bit of reading, the murder-mystery theme and land of the dead theme might be a little mature (there's a plot description here to give you the gist of the scenario, and there's an area with a WW1 kind of feel which might not be a theme you want to explore. The gameplay primarily focuses on combat, but it's never against humans and there's no blood or visible damage (you fight "Folk", spirits in fantastic forms, many with names familiar from folklore like Cait Sidhe, Barghest, Browney...).

Moving back to the PS2, there are some excellent JRPGs which could do the job, again gameplay is primarily focused on exploration and combat, but there's no blood or realistic reaction and the focus is on none-humanoid opponents:
Rogue Galaxy: My absolute favourite, it's a sci-fi setting, but think Sword & Planet or Star Wars rather than true sci-fi, interesting mini-games like catching insects and duelling them or using a factory to create items (the factory is a really good logic puzzle actually, you have to lay down pipes and get all the timings right so your ingredients come together simultaneously).
Wild Arms 3 Fantasy Wild West, so everyone uses guns but has magic too, unique look and possibly the best into-sequence/prologue ever.
Summoner & Summoner 2: Not a JRPG this time, they acknowledge their D&D roots (there was an easter egg at the end of the first game of the characters playing D&D - acting out the Dead Alewives "I attack the darkness!" sketch). Unfortunately the first game is slow, rather ugly-looking and has a very wonky combat system, but it's possibly the most traditional game out there for PS2 in terms of look, character archetypes and storyline (ignoring the ninjas). The second one I lovelovelove, though I may be the only one. It's got a great assortment of characters, a fairly interesting plot and towards the end, some incredibly surreal environments that really have to be seen.
Kingdom Hearts: My guilty pleasure, I was never going to play it, I mean, playing a kid running around with Final Fantasy and Disney characters hitting things with a giant key? Ugh... but a friend forced me to try it and I admit, these games are fantastically fun, and surprisingly well written.
Grandia 2: Worth a mention just for having a selfish-mercenary-becoming-selfless-hero main character that I didn't hate and was actually fairly convincing in his transformation. Great plot, even if it is rather predictable if you know your JRPG tropes...
Final Fantasy 10: OK, I wasn't a big fan of this, but that was very much a personal thing as several characters annoyed me and as the game is very cutscene heavy, that kind of stuck with. Possibly the game with the biggest plot-to-combat ratio here (did I mention it's cutscene heavy :P). I wouldn't recommend the other Final Fantasy on the PS2 (12) for a kid though, the plot is kind of political and they'd probably find it hard to follow (hell, I lost track occasionally), especially as what the party are doing isn't the main focus of the story (the main character actually is just a guy).
Dragon Quest 8: Here's where to go if you want your classic "Save the king and his beautiful daughter from the evil wizard's curse" plot.

Also whilst I'm on the PS2, moving outside of RPGs, everyone, and I mean everyone, should play Psychonauts. One of the best written games in history yet it had criminally low sales...

I am a woman gamer. And I do not feel offended by the image. It's funny, I liked it.

Merry Christmas to all!

I guess part of it is frequenting this messageboards, I mean "More Seoni fan-service!" is virtually a meme, so it kind of comes across as a joke...

** spoiler omitted **

Ah, well, nobody has done it yet. I'm just finishing prepping the adventure and making sure I've covered everything. Although, you make it sound like it's a rare thing to accomplish this task...

Agreed with Dragnmoon, though I have no problem with the kiddie game selection (though there are a couple of more mature games out there if you look for them; still, I play LittleBigPlanet on the PS3 all the time, so I'm not ashamed of playing pastel-coloured games :), I just found it really gimmicky. I'm in a house of five gamers who are all fans of a pretty wide variety of video game genres and after a couple of months of playing on the Wii constantly we've barely touched it besides getting out Wii Sports, Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros for parties. The controller just isn't precise enough so often sword-fighting type games you're just as good just waggling the wii-mote around randomly as actually trying to do it properly. I also find it massively uncomfortable for more traditional games (I stopped playing Mario Galaxy partly in frustration at the camera and partly because after several levels the controls still felt way too loose and unnatural).

So yeah, good for parties, lame for long term play. Admittedly it probably doesn't help that its 480p resolution looks terrible on our 42" TV, even without comparing it to the 360/PS3. Weird because I play old PS2 and even SNES games on that TV fine, the Wii just looks really bad for some reason.

On the other hand, some of the things people have hacked together using the Wii-mote (like the head tracker, interactive whiteboard and roomba controller) are really cool.

Ok, I'm probably going to be unneccessarily thorough here by listing all the "Western style" RPGs I can think of off the top of my head that have any kind of party element to them, since whilst most of them have AI controlled party members and aren't based on D&D or even high fantasy, I figured you might be interested in the games that have the storys and sidequests to more than make up for it:

D&D games with full party control:
Icewind Dale I & II: As everyone else has said, these games are the closest fit, they're very similar to BG though rather more linear story-wise and there are no NPCs that can join your party, you have to make 6 characters from scratch.
Neverwinter Nights II: If you like NPCs with their own backstory rather than making an entire party yourself, this may be a better choice than IWD, I also think the plot is better than IWD (though I know a lot of people don't like it, I really enjoyed it). You have to like controlling the minutae of your party as the AI is so atrocious that it's really best played with the AI turned off completely. It's also more than a little buggy unfortunately, some people get through fine, but I hit lots of crashing issues.
Temple of Elemental Evil: More dungeon crawl than plot-filled, but pretty faithful to the 3.5 rules and quite open ended. You'll have to spend a lot of time patching it to make it even vaguely playable though.
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor: Ugh, maybe if you *desperately* needed a D&D fix. Definately patch it before you play it (one of the bugs in the unpatched version can kill your OS on uninstall). The plot is OK but it's slooooooooow, it's one huge dungeon crawl so the NPCs are few and far between. It's also fully turn based with no options for automation so you have to plug your way through every damn skeleton, plus you don't get full customisation on levelling (feats etc. are chosen for you).

Full party control but not D&D:
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I & II: Honestly, if you don't mind Star Wars this is probably your best choice. The first one in particular has an excellent plot and engaging NPCs to recruit. The second one is similar, but the plots a little more disappointing (though mostly just because of the ending)
X-Men Legends: Possibly not your cup of tea, it plays very similarly to Dark Alliance/Norrath, but you have a party of four and flick between controlling them with the D-pad, or control can be split by up to four people. Plot is decent though obviously very comic-y

Not full party control & not D&D (except the first one):
Neverwinter Nights: You have a henchman who is controlled by AI and a few simple commands ("heal me" etc.) there's a fair variety of personalities and they all have sub-plots, but they're not as fleshed out or original as BG/PS. The plot of the first installment is kind of predictable TBH, but the Hordes of the Underdark expansion is much better.
Fallout I & II: If you haven't played Fallout you really should, it's post apocalyptic with a fantastic storyline and great characters. You can recruit some diverse NPCs but they're AI controlled
Jade Empire: Mythical ancient China styled setting. About 8 or so NPCs that join your party, you only have one tagging along at a time and they're AI controlled but there's still loads of character development and sub-plots
Mass Effect: Sci-Fi, great storyline, there are six recruitable characters (you can have two with you at a time, AI controlled with some user commands) with really well-developed back stories. The PC version has evil SecuROM DRM on it though, so minus points there.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura: Steampunk Fantasy (it starts with a zepplin being shot down by half-ogres in bi-planes and proceeds from there), bit of a cult classic and definately worth a shot if you don't mind a bit of a wonky combat system (not too much of a problem as it's kind of like Planescape:Torment in that it's possible to talk your way through large chunks of the game, hell, some of the AI controlled NPCs will leave if you solve too many problems through violence). It's actually pretty non-linear with your decisions making a fair bit of difference to your options plot-wise. I really recommend it.
Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader: Alternate history medieval period with added magic. An example of squandered potential sadly, an ingenious idea for a plot (who doesn't love the idea of hanging out with Galileo or having Joan of Arc accompany you on your adventures), that kind of falls over in the execution. Play it until you leave Barcelona for lots of cool NPC interaction, then quit when it turns into a Diablo clone.
Dragon Age: Origins: coming out next year (in theory), billed as dark heroic fantasy and the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, could be good, who knows?

And the one that doesn't fit at all, but is my guilty pleasure:
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines: OK, so it's a modern day action RPG with no party, is occasionally juvenile about sex and violence (don't play a female Malkavian unless you want to be staring at fetish gear all game), the last quarter kicks your ass if you play a social character unless you have maxed out obfuscate or something to give you a combat edge like high celerity, and it's buggy as all hell, but I love it to death. The script is clever and your conversation options change frequently depending on your clan and whether you've bought up persuade/seduce/intimidate. There are plenty of sidequests and half a dozen alternate endings, and whilst the environments are often too damn dark, they can also be really evocative to the point of being downright creepy at times. It's worth playing just to play through as a Malk to see all their crazy conversation options and household appliances talking to you ("murder, murder, murder...").

As to why there aren't more decent D&D games, blame TSR for utter lack of quality control in the 2e days, or Hasbro for giving exclusive rights to Atari, or Atari for not doing enough with the licence...

How is their lack of attention span showing? If it's messing around on laptops/mobiles/the tv, you might want to ban those things at the table. I find gaming in as quiet an area as possible, stripping the table down to the bare essentials (so they have their character sheets, dice and the PHB, you have all the mapping materials, rules and settings books and any GMing materials you need off to the side somewhere, until they're actually needed on the table) and switching off distracting things like TV and music (unless it's mood music for the game, which can aid concentration if it's not too familiar) can help get people focused.

As they're inexperienced, I'd agree with the recommendation to run them through some low-mid level modules before hitting up a whole AP, possibly using pre-generated characters. This shouldn't cost you much money, go to your FLGS and pick up some of the d20 licence 3pp stuff that everyone's selling at crazy prices to get rid of their stock before the licence runs out if you want hard copies. If you're good with pdfs go for the ridiculously cheap Goodman stuff on this website, or PFS scenarios (they have the added bonus of only being one 3-4 hour session long, where most modules will take a couple of sessions), or pick up the free module Hollow's Last Hope. If you want something that starts to get players interested in urban adventuring and balancing combat with roleplay encounters, I'd seriously recommend Tim Hitchcock's wonderful adventure A Pound of Flesh from 0one games. I wouldn't recommend starting with 4e if you're intending to run CotCT in 3.5/PFRPG, if they're new to both systems I think you'd run the risk of just confusing them...

Mostly I think you need to get them enthusiastic about D&D and playing characters that are viable and more than cardboard cutouts before considering running any AP. An AP is a huge investment of time and energy if the GM or the players aren't going to enjoy it, and for CotCT in particular, it really works best when everyone plays interesting characters with some real emotional investment in Korvosa.

Never really is a strong word...However an Advanced Player's Guide with Barbarians and Druids will honestly never hapen because that stuff is in WotC's upcoming PHB2.

** spoiler omitted **

Anyway, I'm just bimbling about something relatively inane for fun. Mostly I have no intention of watching the next series, the poor story structure and appalling charactarisation in this one has just put me right off sadly...