James May's page

I need to cancel my subscription to Planet Stories. I hate it, but I need the extra income. I will still pick them up when I get a chance.

Thanks,

James May

Thanks for fixing my subscription Alison.

I am in the same boat. I want to finish my subscription with #12, so I don't want #13.

I do want to keep my Planet Stories Subscribtion though.

Thanks,

James May

Whatever you do, do not use dry erase markers on this! I picked up the wrong marker by accident and now mine has a huge ugly green boat drawn on the square side. My friends laugh at me each time I use it. Dry erase markers do not come off by any solvent I could get my hands on commerically. But I really loved it until I ruined it.

Good Morning,

After some careful consideration of my monthly budget and my overwhelming pile of RPG material, I need to cancel some of my subscriptions.

I would like to cancel my Pathfinder Modules, Pathfinder Companion, and Pathfinder Chronicles subscriptions.

The only ones I want to keep are the Pathfinder Adventure Path and Planet Stories.

This is not a reflection on the quality of the products, which I think is excellent. Nor is it because of your customer service, which I think is stellar.

Thanks,

James May
The Broke

This is fantastic news! I am a huge fan of Monte Cook's work. Pathfinder keeps getting better and better.

Keep on producing awesome work!

~~JM

I like the idea of wizards using a d6. I usually play clerics, but single time I have played a wizard it has died before reaching level 2. A few extra hit points would be a nice change.

I would rather they got level 1-20 settled before they think of ways to fit 20+ into things.

Thanks,

~~JM

I want to chime in on the thank you's. I just got off of the phone spreading the good news to my group. We are looking forward to running solely Pathfinder games.

Thank you for the risk you are taking in moving out of the pack to provide us with what we want. I know that we will be supporting you all the way! My wife and I have also made a commitment to only purchase RPG products from your website as a gesture of our support. (If we had a local game store we would also purchase your products there, but we do not.)

Keep up the fantastic work,

~~JM

Would I be safe in assuming that Second Darkness is going to be 3.5 since it is being released under the OGL instead of the GSL (or is it just wishful thinking)?

Wow! This is very cool. Short of coming with free back massages, the benefits of being a Pathfinder Subscriber could not get any better.

Thanks for this!

~~JM

1) Do you plan to convert to the new edition of D&D?

No, my group and I are pretty much against anything we have seen so far in fourth edition. We probably won't convert until 5th or 6th edition comes out.

2) If Paizo converts its RPG products to 4.0, how will that affect your purchasing patterns for our products?

If Paizo converts to 4.0, I will actually not purchase most of it, unless there are easy to use conversion guides. Things that are system neutral I might still buy, but overall, I think you would see a gradual decrease in my purchases. Especially if another company puts out quality 3.5 stuff. No sense in keeping purchasing things I would not be using. (I'll still keep my Planet Stories Subscription.)

3) If Paizo does not convert its RPG products to 4.0, how will that affect your purchasing patterns for our products?

If Paizo does not convert, I will continue with my subscriptions and anything not subscription based, I will probably pick up as well, due to WOTC not getting any of my money for the new edition.

We'll consider this idea, as well as the idea of a calendar featuring some of this art. Right now the closest thing to art prints of these covers we have are three postcards featuring the covers of The Anubis Murders, City of the Beast, and Black God's Kiss. They aren't for sale, though. We hand them out at conventions and send them to stores to hand out.

We'll consider the prints idea.

--Erik

Thank you for this well thought out and written post. I feel smarter for reading it. (Which is unusual for 4th edition posts.)

The Tequila Sunrise Tome of Collected House Rules and Variants

Inside you'll find dozens of simple and effective variants to make your game more streamlined and more fun, organized by Player's Handbook chapters (and a DMG chapter).

TS

Thanks for posting these, I may start using something like them in my campaign.

This looks pretty cool. I just purchased a copy and can't wait to give it a try in my games.

I have always been disappointed that more was not done with the different types of magic from ToM.

I also wish someone would write something this cool for incarnum magic.

Man, my masochistic players are going to be sad that this has been pushed back. They love the critical hit deck and for some strange reason have been clamoring for me to get the critical fumble deck as well.

I think I can see where the OP was going with his overextended metaphor. Working in a business that deals primarily with churches, it is kind of funny to see how they squabble over which one of them is truest to the "original text."

Basically, and please correct me if I am wrong, what you are saying is that pretty much everyone who is not accepting 4e, is responding in a similar manner as evangelical christians; who squabble amongst themselves over which ones are the most faithful.

I can see how it would be easy to simplify the conflict as this. A better analogy might be needed to express your ideas. People see what they construe to be a religious topic and go ape.

All this said, I guess I am a member of the church of 3.5. (Being a megachurch member, due to your analogy, I guess I am doomed to start playing 4.0 pretty soon; since sterotypically megachurch members are only at megachurches because megachurches are popular.)

I may be jumping the gun but it looks like the third adventure
path will now be 4E. I will still have 3 issues of Pathfinder
coming to me. Since I have no interest in an adventure path for
a game I'm not buying will you offer refunds for the remaining subscription.

Of course those promises where made before the ogl information was released, but I imagine that given Paizo's great track record as far as customers are concerened, even if they do decide to release the third AP for Pathfinder in 4e, they would probably provide some kind of alternate stats for 3.5.

I guess it wouldn't be too bad to try out a dragonborn. They might be okay to play as.

The groups I have been with really haven't done much with dragons so I'm not too sick of them.

I guess what I'm really looking for is info on what is in the print version that's not in the PDF (or "inconvenient"). Like, for example, two-page maps and/or artwork that is not easily reproduce-able with a PDF. Or anything like that.

Hope this helps,
JM

Anyone know when this will be available for us Mac users?

Sorry,
JM

All righty here goes: Condition Table Tent Template Word Document

They are pretty simple and require some prep for what conditions you would want but they may be helpful to some body I hope.

And thanks to the above poster who used driveway. It sure beats the heck out of using freebie web pages with bandwidth limits to share some things I created.

Thanks,
JM

You might be able to just make up a word document that you could print out on card stock or laminate to make as table tent conditions. I'm going to try to make some and will post a link if I can get them working.

I know the furor has died down, but I want to add a little voice saying that I like some of the above posters really enjoy Nick's adventures. My group really enjoys the darker modules and I am glad that Paizo uses skilled writers like Mr. Logue in their product lines.

Thanks,
JM

I really am very pleased with everything in Pathfinder so far. The only thing I would change would be the Pathfinder Journal. It really does not do much for me in its current form.

A few ideas for additions I think would be cool are having tear out or poster: player handouts, battle maps of key locations, and/or maps town or country maps of key regions.

Another thing I am slightly concerned about is how much of the information in the back halves of Pathfinder will be repeated in the PF Chronicles products. I see the necessity for some repeated information, but I hope that it is greatly expanded on.

Keep up the good work,
James May

Wow, traps and now this. Two things that don't make me wail and gnash my teeth.

Sorry, I just had to try it. Smurf.

So here's my starter question:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Elves living only 200 years, with eladrin and drow living 300.

Why the age change?

But seeing that that is not the case, I have no idea other than they just wanted a flavor change.

I have been pretty down on 4E, but this article on traps is not too terrible. I like the way this will speed the game up by assuming the players are always searching for traps. It has always sucked as party cleric to enter a room full of chests or doors and having to wait while the rogue checks them all.

One thing that 4E seems to be doing right is an emphasis on streamlining some of the more mundane tasks of the game. Of course passive scanning for traps could just be houseruled in under 3.5. And as of the start of my next DMing adventure I think it will be...

I realy wouldn't worry too much about the 3.5 archives going away. Unless there is some kind of statement that has been released saying they were being removed. If you look at the archives, they go all the way back to 2000. They also have a bit of older stuff they have available..

I am very glad to see the announcement Pathfinder Minis. I hope that they are the same quality as the wonderful Ptolus minis. I also hope that they do not flop like the Ptolus ones did. I like that the large selection of villains presented by the line so far. As a DM, it always seems hard to find just the right mini to express a monster. It always seem a little bit easier to find minis to represent PC's and NPC's.

For future releases, I would like to see some Ogres and Giants from Pathfinder #3. Some of the re-imagined dragons would be cool too, but due to their size, may be a little too costly to sell well. I'm not in a financial position to justify more than 15.00 per mini right now and I live in a two income house with no kids, which probably gives me more disposable income than most of your customers.

Thanks for planning these minis,
~James May

James May wrote:

Nice to know I am not the only one. I placed one earlier with the same problem and emailed customer service.

I haven't emailed them because I've found posting on the boards to be more effective. I emailed once last year about a problem and waited a week for a big fat nothing. On day 8 I posted here and Cosmo replied within the hour. Of course it's holiday time now and they're probably getting addled somewhere to celebrate the New Year... so maybe in a few days, once their sobriety returns, one of the customer service goons will pop in and threaten our families if we don't shut up.

Cuz that's what usually happens.

Thanks,
James May

Nice to know I am not the only one. I placed one earlier with the same problem and emailed customer service.

What really bothers me about this is this quote from the last paragraph before the stats in the preview:

"One of the changes that we decided on early for player character races was that we would only provide ability score bonuses. Penalties based on your choice of race are a thing of the past."

There does not seem to be trade offs to choosing a race. In current D&D, every race had a positive trait and a flaw. You could be an elf and get a nice bonus to Dex, but you had a trade off, Con.

This is just one more thing in my long list of turn-offs to 4e.

Like I totally watched the cartoon thing and I am so like unimpressed. Like really, if I hear "like" one more time so help me God...

I live in TN, and have not received mine yet, but I suspect it is held up by the high bulk of Christmas mail. I expect mine any day now. I received an order today that shipped on the same day as my subscription, and I know that sometimes with subscriptions the order shipment date is off by a day or two due to bulk mailing. I wouldn't worry about your Pathfinder getting lost until after Christmas.

So this is a non-random deck? It doesn't say one way or the other in the description, but the list of cards looks non-random (unless there are more than 1 version of each).

I originally decided not to use item cards because I didn't want to buy any random crap. I hate the marketing method and refuse to be a part of it. But, since it appears that item card approach has changed, how can I be sure which decks are non-random?

Based on my understanding of the warmage, the spells learned by advanced learning are treated just like any other warmage spell and thus receive the benefit of the armored mage class feature.

At level 8, the warmage should be able to cast using medium armor without an arcane spell failure chance. As far as shields go, I'm not sure how that goes and I don't have Complete Arcane in easy reach right now.

One of my gaming groups is getting ready to switch over to this system. My wife and I aren't completely convinced that it is the system for us, but so far it has not been terrible.

It is hard for us to adjust to not having skills and feats. (We started playing with 3.5, so we don't have old school memories like the rest of our group.)

Our DM (or Castle Keeper now...) is top notch though, so I'm sure we will have fun. We are taking the rest of the month off from that game due to the holidays, but once we play again I will post further thoughts if anyone is interested.

Thank you for the subscription option. Also thank you for cancelling preordered products that would be covered by the subscription. That saved me the hassle of having to type out an email to customer service.

I like a lot of stuff from AE. It really is like a 3.75. The magic system has ten levels of spells, so you could not mix it with a regular PHB caster. I have considered having my game group switch to it, but they are too cheap to buy the book.

I was thought of a cool idea, but I did not have time to formulate it into words: "Book of the Bard". The book would give you some kind of Bardlike ability.

Yes, we have the rights to Death in Delhi, and will most likely release it in very early 2009.

--Erik

JM

I'll be subscribing too.

Good Evening,

I was wondering if you had any plans on publishing the last of the Inhetep novels (Death in Dehli) by Gary Gygax. I really liked the Anubis Murders and am going to pre-order The Samarkand Solution on my next pay day.

Thanks.

Stebehil wrote:

...At least no politicians...

That is interesting.

But now I am shipping manager for a Christian Bookstore. If I divulged anymore information I would probably be unemployed...

When I finish college, (I'm on the married, ten year plan) I will be the world's greatest Chemist.

The shipping costs are not actually too bad either!