James Thomas's page

I refuse to participate in this thread.

Any idea how long it takes for the "consideration process" of the class acts to get done? I've still got a few in my draw with "will they or won't they" written all over them since early March. Or am I just being too darn impatient?

Join the club.

Hey folks-

Don't have much time to chat, but we've been hovering at March 26th for a while where submissions are concerned - there's just a lot going on with the magazines right now. As for the "if you've not heard back from us within a month, please email..." section of the submission guidelines... right at the moment, I'd recommend waiting three months before pinging us about a query, as the less pings we have to respond to, the more queries we can read. Congrats to all the greenlights, good luck to the rest, and I hope to be emailing you soon!

-James S.

Thanks for the note. This is what a lot of us needed to hear from you. Happy to wait...

After a brief hiatus, I have yet another query marching towards the gate. Any idea how much of a backlog the gatekeeper currently faces?

Only the Gatekeeper knows for sure... Cast Legend Lore, Speak With Nature, or - if necessary - Speak With Dead.

At least I'm appearing in a Goodman Games release later this month, so it ain't all bad ;)

Dude! How does one get some of that Goodman Games action? I like their products... It would be kewl to make a submission.

Wow, almost a week and nothing new in this thread...I can practically hear the tumbleweeds rolling past in the street...

::brushes out from under a tumbleweed::

Well, I'm still here and waiting! No word on my submission yet. I can wait...

Magic 8-ball, Magic 8-ball!!...... Nuthin'. Nuthin' yet.

Magic 8-ball... will my submission be accepted?

C'mon! Magic 8-ball! C'mon!!

James had indicated recently that the Grey Render was warming up the ol' pimp hand.

Watch your language, Turbo, this is a family show...

James Thomas wrote:

You're a man after my own heart, Ultradan. 1st edition level progression may have been a nightmare of complications and slow progression, but 3rd ed is too brisk! Low-level advenutring is gone like vapor!

We just finished Mad God's Key. It took three gaming sessions. And even if I cut the experience points IN HALF, every character (all four of them) still reached the second level.

Ok, I added an encounter with wolves on their way to the tomb, and I awarded a player 50 xp for killing a bee in my garage while we were playing, but this is hardly the reason for the still too quick (for my taste) level-upping.

Will I have to give out one quarter xp to slow them down?

Ultradan

Let's hope not U-man...

One option may be to keep more careful track of the necessary experience points. If you can convince your players to allow you to track their experience for them, you'd have more control and see how close they are. Let me know if that works for you...

Ok, there goes my question: Your character is 40 years old and gets killed by the evil necromancer. The party is unable (not enough $ and no clerics) to revive that character. They bury the character and go back to to the evil necromancer's lair to revenge the dead character(ok, let's call him Joe)

AFTER 20 YEARS of slaying beasts and saving kingdoms from worm gods' worshipers, the party can finnaly revive Joe...and the question is: how old is Joe now?..is he still 40 or not? Do characters age when they are dead?..

More to the point, Hellfinger, is that "joe" will be rather low in level relative to the rest of the party. The PCs will have difficulty keeping him alive when he's 3rd level and they're 12th...

I think the PCs are leveling WAY too fast. The players don't even have enough time to use their new skills and "paf!" there's another level-up.

I started to read "The Red Hand of Doom" last week. The story is pretty good, but this series of adventures takes the characters from 6th level to about 12th level in only a month's game time. Man that's fast!

I started a new campaign last saturday (started with Mad God's Key) and told my players that I'd be cutting xp rewards in half. They grunted at first, but then realized that those low-level adventures were the most fun, so they ended up liking the idea.

This solution also gives me more time to come up with adventures. Before, I would forsee putting a certain adventure in the characters' future, but by the time they got there, they were two levels over the recommended level of play and that meant more work for me.

Ultradan

You're a man after my own heart, Ultradan. 1st edition level progression may have been a nightmare of complications and slow progression, but 3rd ed is too brisk! Low-level advenutring is gone like vapor!

All quiet on the Submission Front...
Just keep waiting patiently everybody. A wink is as good as a nod to a blind man...

First Edition was too slow. Third Edition is too speedy! I give my PCs half the DMG recommended experience points and they go up just about right - with no complaints or bored/complaining players.

Not certain if it's Dragon or Dungeon but it is this year or last. It's an article on pointers to make your game low magic.

Eh, who needs an article...

I've got your low-magic gameworld info right here. Run just that sort of game myself. What would you like to know?

Dungeon did poster sized maps of Greyhawk from issues 118-121. I already own all 4 issues but I have none of the maps :(

I am interested particularly in the areas to the South and East of the Free City of Greyhawk (Cairn Hills, Wild Coast).

Which issue should I buy that will give me the best coverage of those areas?

I am assuming I cannot just order the maps?

For what it's worth, I do have two ebberron maps (Dungeon 122?), if anyone has an extra Greyhawk map perhaps we could work a trade?

Dude! You want the Greyhawk maps? You got 'em! I've been wanting to unload these for months. Don't have a need for them OR for Ebberron either. What else you got to trade?

Have you guys seen these?

I'm interested in your thoughts, as DMs, on using a product like this.

Thanks!

--Erik Mona

I've been using VShane's product at RPG Now for a few years now, and I create my own cards. I make one for every significan item a character has. My players love them, though they require a bit of prep time to locate an appropriate image, print out and detail. I think I'll check out Paizo's product. Looks high quality...

I think we should re-name this post "The Waiting Room".

I'm waiting too...

$18.00 an hour, 40 hours a week. Steady government contractor work...
Gotta find a way to make better use of my College education. History majors have few prospects in the USA.

I'm completely confused now...
But if we have to buy all new 4.0 books just so Hasbro can make money, I'll be quite angry! I may delare war!!

Blimmey - like Mr Dory it's back from the dead...

Great to hear that The Styes is running well and that your players are enjoying it. The bottom line with the mix of Tharizdun and aboleth was that it was all James J's idea. I had originally submitted the Styes as a sahaugin adventure, with the main villain being a mutated sahaugin with more than a hint of deep...

I must tell you Richard that your Styes is superior work. It's inspired my DMing and Submission ambitions. I, too, am a admirer of the Shrine of Tamochan - a work of near-genious!

Please keep submitting. I look forward to seeing more from you!
Well done Dungeon!!

I also have a system for training. Basically xp for time and money spent. How does yours work?

Same idea. I also give experience points equal to defeating the person in combat if you convert them (clerics only).

I don't like that it costs XP to make things. Can you select which memories you lose when you make an item? "I learned how to bake a cake last week, but I'm going to have to learn again because I want to make an invisibility scroll"

Friends, friends, friends... The point is that experience points represent increased ability to perform. Which is why I've develped a "non-adventuring" experience point system. Yes, during a character's "down time" between adventures he can earn experience points via study and practice. With this system, a character can improve and practice his stuff and earn experience points. This is of course, not the stuff of "high adventure", so it's not the sort of thing we do on a regular basis, but it does fill in the gaps and makes a lot of sense to me. Comments?

When I saw The Isle of Dread in Dungeon a while back I said to myself "Please let them update this completely!" and now THIS!

Even I am overjoyed! Now you folks need to live up to some pretty high expectations.... Keep your axes sharp!

I immigrated to the U.S. in 1978 at age 11, Heathansson, from Germany. I got my U.S. citizenship in 1987. I don't consider myself a German any more, obviously. I think you pose an interesting question. The most influential thing on me growing up as a pre-teen in Germany was soccer. I played it, lived it, breathed it whenever possible. The other influential thing was the Wild West. I grew up watching German Westerns (Karl May--Old Shatterhand, Winnetou, go google it and be surprised) and we played a lot of Cowboys and Indians. I saw every episode of Bonanza in German...it was actually weird to hear Hoss' real voice the first time I saw it in English.

We did play knights a lot as well....my grandfather made me a shield out of the back of an old TV and we used to beat the crud out of each other with broomsticks in the woods behind my house. There were a lot of medieval museums around--a castle near my hometown had a lot of armor and weapons on display and I enjoyed visiting the castles, but nothing was as cool as dreaming about the Wild West....Germany has a huge following of U.S. western culture--there's German country music, German trucker music and live Wild West plays conducted in huge outdoor amphitheaters.

So, the assumption that European D&D players might have had a different influence on them growing up than U.S. gamers might not be as valid as you might think. I didn't really appreciate the incredible amount of historical treasures and museums in Germany until I got older, became American, and visited them when I went to vacation in Germany and visit family. It's certainly easier to visit places like that when they're right next door, but that doesn't mean you appreciate them more...I think that's an internal decision.

Thanks, that was interesting

Always interesting, you're comments King.

My most annoying habit is that I lose my temper with some of my players sometimes, especially when they're too lazy to look things up in the books they have, and when they consistently refuse to print out and utilize the in-between game handouts I e-mail them. I have to realize that most of them just want to play and don't give a flying rats ass about the extra feats I might allow them to take if they bothered reading them.

Your situation speaks to my condition, brother. We cannot always pick our players...

Feel free to use material from WotC's website in your adventure; treat it as a non-core book (in other words, we'll have to reprint rules mechanics). Sure... it's free to get, but we can't assume that all of our readers have internet access.

How about Map-a-week maps? Those are pretty interesting...
Can we use them in a submission?

You have to game to your players. Otherwise you're out of a job.