Jason Nelson's page

I agree as well. The motivations of the various factions are much better explored (and make a lot more sense) in the Director's Cut version than in the published version. Definitely worth checking out.

@Akumamajin: Jason Nelson also has a Director's Cut version of his Kingmaker AP instalment; "War of the River Kings". I'm not sure if there are other "director's cut" versions or other forms of additional material out there for any of the other AP modules.

Generally speaking, as freelancers who sell our work to Paizo, we respect the right of Paizo to create the adventures they want to create, which means respecting the published versions of adventures and not going around spamming unpublished manuscripts willy-nilly. They might have things in them Paizo doesn't want associated with their adventure, for any reason at all, and if someone plays an unofficial version and finds something they don't like and goes online complaining about it, that puts Paizo in a difficult position because now they have to take criticism for something that they already "fixed." This is of course apart from the fact that we want people to BUY PAIZO ADVENTURES, not facilitate IP piracy.

So I say all that to say, if you email the writer of a particular product that you own, you can always ask them if they have any supplemental material, notes, etc. that they would be willing to share. Generally speaking, they will say yes, sure, here it is... with the caveat that you not share or repost it anywhere (if someone asks you about it, refer them to that author to make their own request).

TL;DR = if you'd like DC notes for End of Eternity, or War of the River Kings, or even The Hungry Storm, etc., feel free to email at

You could try the same with other authors if they are inclined to share their email. They may say yes, they may say no. Be gracious either way. Most important, whether using the published version, notes from the author, or otherwise... HAVE FUN!

P.S. Glad you guys enjoyed the DC! The idea that there was no clear-cut "bad guy" was 100% my intention - an adventure that you could legitimately play any of a couple of ways, and any of them could succeed.

Jason Nelson wrote:

Alas, for the heinous and horribulous bits that ended up on the cutting room floor. You might've thought it a bit more difficult with them... :)

Perhaps you'd like to share the nasty? :-)

email me if you'd like a copy at

In my opinion, it varies far too much by book to give a good analysis. There isn't a real coherency in difficulty within APs.

Standout "hard books" include:
- Skinsaw Murders
- Trial of the Beast
- House of the Beast

Standout "easy books" include:
- War of the River Kings
- Rivers Run Red
- Ashes at Dawn

Interestingly, all of the books I rated "hard" were the 2nd book in the campaign.

Alas, for the heinous and horribulous bits that ended up on the cutting room floor. You might've thought it a bit more difficult with them... :)

Rachel Ticotin
was in the highly ridiculous but enjoyable
Con Air
with the ever-delightful
John Cusack

I have one word for today's comic (or, really, the last couple):

INTENSE

Chilling would also work.

Redcloak has definitely Taken a Level in Badass, hardcore style.

Jason Nelson wrote:

Blessings on the new addition, though. I have it on good authority that July is an excellent month in which to be born! :)

I appreciate the good wishes, Jason, but my wife suffered a miscarriage 8 weeks into her term. I indicated that elsewhere on the boards (and on Facebook, too), but you probably missed it.

:(

That is all. In that case, blessings and prayers for you both for entirely less happy reasons.

I'm going to have to cancel my trip this year. My wife is expecting (our 4th child) and the due date is mid-July. So, she's going to be 8-1/2 months pregnant by the time PaizoCon rolls around. Therefore, it's best if I stay home. And, quite honestly, from a financial perspective, that'll be better as well. Luckily, I haven't made hotel or airline reservations yet. So I don't have to cancel any of that or eat a cancellation fee. I do, however, need to rescind my PaizoCon registration and banquet ticket. I'll post something in the customer service forum to that effect.

I also wanted to post here, however, and wish everyone a great PaizoCon. I know it's Paizo's 10-year anniversary. And there'll be lots of excitement around the new Pathfinder Online venture. Everyone raise a glass for me and hopefully I'll make it out next year or possibly see you at GenCon.

Aw man!!!!!! :(

Virtual fist bump only this year, alas. Blessings on the new addition, though. I have it on good authority that July is an excellent month in which to be born! :)

Kristianna Loken
was in
Terminator 3
with
Arnold Schwarzenegger

Hello,

I was rolling up an Archivist today when I noticed that the Loremaster ability that archivists get is considerably weaker than the one that normal bards get.

Does anyone know if this is intentional? It seems odd, since being able to make knowledge checks is, well, rather important for an archivist . . .

Also, does anyone know if Paizo ever clarified how taking 10 and taking 20 works for this ability? I rather wish they'd phrased it differently, heh . . .

That entry is intended as a modification to the normal Loremaster ability, not a replacement for it. The only difference is that you can take 20 1/day plus once for every 6 levels beyond 2nd, instead of every 6 levels beyond 5th. The rest of the ability works as is.

I should have included the phrase "This ability functions as normal, except [blah blah blah times per day]" or the sentence "This is otherwise identical to the bard class ability.

Sorry for any confusion, but that was the intent as I wrote the archetype - you just get loremaster 3 levels earlier than a normal bard. Other than that, it's the same.

Jason Nelson wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

Biobeast wrote:

2 faults I see with the AP’s in general.

1-The no-play testing makes many of them not a readymade pick up and play product that most other RPG products are. People who frequent these boards are used to making adjustments to the product and reviewing other people’s comments and changes. If you saw it in your game store picked it up and tried to run it without knowing about all the adjustments needed it would be very hard on anyone but the most experienced gamers.

2-Starting with Carrion Crown players need more then the core rulebooks to play; which would be very expensive to people who are not already Pathfinder fans. In other words the long term sustainability of picking up players will be a serious challenge if this continues.

All the rules are up free of charge on the PRD and at d20pfsrd.

Yep.

In the final episode of S&S I'm writing, things are included from the PFRPG rulebooks line beyond the Core Rulebook and I don't think that should be a problem for anyone, given the free availability of those rules. There are very few things in there that are from other books (e.g., Inner Sea World Guide), and all of those are fully explained in the text or stat blocks as to what they do and how to use them.

You are making an assumptoin that people know what website to go to, I didn't see that in CC where there were a bunch of craetures from Bestiary #2 or stat blocks with withches and Magus, a lot of stuff was in the stat block but not the basics like the Magus spell combat or the Withes hexes. I'm not talking experienced Pathfinder players I'm talking brand new players. In my game group we rotate DM's. Myself and another DM are internet seach savy and found all this stuff no problem. 2 others were not, got very frustrated with varoius things they were trying to prepare until I pointed them to the needed links. And we have all the books but still 2 of 4 almost could not function as DM's due to not being very...

Interesting. I thought there was a note right on the title page or the editor's foreword/intro of every AP pointing people to paizo.com and the PRD for further information. I'm at work at the moment so I can't check, but I thought I had seen it there.

If it's not, that would definitely be something worth adding to the title page/intro, to make sure that presumed free availability is more of a reality.

Biobeast wrote:

2 faults I see with the AP’s in general.

1-The no-play testing makes many of them not a readymade pick up and play product that most other RPG products are. People who frequent these boards are used to making adjustments to the product and reviewing other people’s comments and changes. If you saw it in your game store picked it up and tried to run it without knowing about all the adjustments needed it would be very hard on anyone but the most experienced gamers.

2-Starting with Carrion Crown players need more then the core rulebooks to play; which would be very expensive to people who are not already Pathfinder fans. In other words the long term sustainability of picking up players will be a serious challenge if this continues.

All the rules are up free of charge on the PRD and at d20pfsrd.

Yep.

In the final episode of S&S I'm writing, things are included from the PFRPG rulebooks line beyond the Core Rulebook and I don't think that should be a problem for anyone, given the free availability of those rules. There are very few things in there that are from other books (e.g., Inner Sea World Guide), and all of those are fully explained in the text or stat blocks as to what they do and how to use them.

I would love to see your original texts. Are they available anywhere?

Not posted anywhere, no, but you can send me a private email at

and I can hook you up.

Amusingly, I'm running War of the River Kings right now in my own home campaign, the first time I've run a Paizo AP. I'm using my original version, including running the battle scenes as "war and soldiers in the background" with small-unit tactical objective missions for the PCs to do themselves being the focal point/turning point of the battle scenes. Ironic, given that I spent a lot of time working on revising and expanding the mass combat rules, but in the end only one player really wanted to do them (well, one other did, but then he went on a trip to India for 6 weeks right when we were going to be hitting the mass battle scene time!), so in the interest of everyone having fun we skipped the mass combat stuff and focused on PC-level action. It's been fun!

Jason Nelson wrote:

As the designer of your spoiler, I can say that I wrote it up to be a living building, complete with servants, kitchens, armories, libraries, storerooms, and even bathrooms, plus hallways and balconies designed to break up spell areas that might be cast to block sight or access through one point, allowing defenders to circumvent battlefield control effects by simply closing doors and using other ones.

And that's fair. Maybe I'll run it as is because of the reasons you stated. My kneejerk reaction was to simply cut down the doors to keep my players from losing their sanity. But it just might work for these reasons. I mean if the kitchen had cook in it, even if they are not combatants, that may make a serious difference.

However the ** spoiler omitted **

I'm pretty sure most of the servants were removed during editing and development, in part because I had thought the hexploration part of Kingmaker would be over with by the time they got to issue #5 so I wrote zero exploration stuff in my adventure. Oops! They had to find room for it somewhere, so a number of things had to get tightened up. There was also a lot of fluidity in exactly how the mass battle stuff would end up working, so there was some reshuffling needed there as well. It happens. That's freelancing for you!

As the designer of your spoiler, I can say that I wrote it up to be a living building, complete with servants, kitchens, armories, libraries, storerooms, and even bathrooms, plus hallways and balconies designed to break up spell areas that might be cast to block sight or access through one point, allowing defenders to circumvent battlefield control effects by simply closing doors and using other ones.

Perhaps it's the Gygaxian naturalist in me, but I build fantasy buildings like buildings where people would live and work, and most Joe-average workers aren't going to be "monsters" or even encounter-worthy foes at all. By simple math, you're going to have more doors than enemy combatants of note in a living castle. If you're in a ruin or dungeon, though, all bets are off and you might be right.

To W E Ray, I think the claim that APs make Paizo disinclined to try new things or experiment is clearly and demonstrably not true. James rattled off a laundry list of oddball experimental topics, themes, situations, and mechanics that the APs have introduced and employed to keep things fresh and different, from romance and notoriety to running a business or a kingdom to participating in a play or trial or stopping a plague to making a hundred wishes. These are miles away from common ground that has been trod a hundred times.

Variability in adventures is finite, but I think you're selling it far short of reality in claiming that APs aren't already being pretty adventurous and inventive.

Well, if the Order is level 14 now--and I think it's been a little while since they leveled--and Redcloak is only just become level 17 (CR 15-16), they have a good chance of leveling before encountering him where he won't yet gain another level, and the fight would probably be a little more even.

The harder part would be all the minions tiring out the Order before they get to him. If they fought him 5 on 1 he would probably go down pretty fast.

Then again, Redcloak does possess an artifact of unknown provenance (his eponymous garment), so it's possible that would tip the scales more in his favor. If he has PC-level gear, that's an extra +1 CR! :)

Most of all I want an adventure path set in Iblydos, it is the most used mythology yet there aren't any adventures published about it in the entire history of the game.

OOOH OOOHHH - YES!!!!

Ancient Greek style AP for the MFing WIN!

DWARVES! Would make me resubscribe.

An adventure to retake one of the Citadels would be great.

Part could be a trek through the Underdark to recover an artifact lost/left behind on the journey upwards.

Some kind of conflict with duergar would be included.

I like dwarves too. I've often wanted to run the old Night Below campaign, but just reading it one of my annoyances was that, when you go down into the ground, instead of having dwarves, there is YET ANOTHER KIND OF ELVES!!! Lame.

So yes, a hardcore "dungeons deep and caverns old" dwarf-centric AP would be cool beans in my book.

W E Ray wrote:

For 4 years now Jacobs has been saying that APs can't be anything but 6 volumes and for 4 years now I've felt that every "reason" he gives is silly. Harder work on the designers, no doubt. But not undoable (You guys are working your dream-careers, yes?) Not impossible to make sure a new AP begins every GenCon. You got 12 months: One 7 and one 5. Or a 6 and two 3s. Or a 4 a 6 and a 2. Harder work but doable . . . . And you don't have to start every one at 1st level. Starting a 3 volume AP at level 9 would not lose customers. Finishing an 8 volume AP at level 21 would not lose customers. (in theory)

Frankly... "harder work on the designers" is perhaps the number ONE reason I'm not all that eager to switch the 2 APs a year formula. (To a lesser extent is my fear that many AP readers and players would be less interested in shorter Adventure Paths, since we've seen a fair amount of resistance already to APs that don't go as high level as others.)

But working a "dream-career" should NOT be code for "you get to work 80 hours a week on a salary that assumes a 40 hour week just because you enjoy your job enough that if we asked you to work that much you would."

Tru dat. Case in point: I'm up at 1 in the morning on a school/work night because I've got an AP adventure to finish. I love gaming and I love getting paid to write gaming stuff... but a little extra shuteye wouldn't be amiss either, and that's just for me as a regular Paizo contributor that works in and around their production schedules, not even an in-office person in Redmond.

It's easy enough to say, "You love it, just do more," but I've turned down opportunities before for stuff that would've been fun, but I just ain't got the time vs. the other things I want to be able to do. All money ain't good money, bro. :)

Well, now we know that Redcloak is 17th level. What's the highest level spell that V (non-spliced) has cast? The Order needs to do some serious grinding if they want to defeat team evil...

I think V has used prismatic spray, and I know V has learned power word, blind, in a rather hilarious strip about how many pages that spell would take up in zer spellbook. Those are only 7th level, so if the order on the whole is 13-14, just taking on Redcloak would be a super-challenging encounter. Uh oh...

No
No
Yes

I'd be interested to see the system and I'm sure I would enjoy having input on it through playtesting, but I just don't have the time to do it.

My group is close by to you - southern part of West Seattle - but alas I am running Kingmaker and the PCs are around 14th level already, so fails the high-level criterion. Best of luck finding a game, but if you want to check out high level let me know.

pipedreamsam wrote:

Jason Nelson wrote:

Redcloak may be LESS evil than Xykon...

I don't know about this. Redcloak seems methodical while Xykon just seems to be evil for the sake of being evil

Actually, if you have ever read Start Of Darkness, you would see that Redcloak is no where near as evil as Xykon.

If you haven't read it... READ IT!

SO.
GOOD.

Ralph Fiennes
was in
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
where he committed murder most foul upon poor
Robert Patterson

I've watched that movie plenty of times and still get a little choked up at the mood whiplash scene where Harry brings Cedric's body back to the stadium. Poor Ced's dad... :(

Redcloak may be LESS evil than Xykon...

but he's still PLENTY EVIL!

P.S. Love the osmium elemental! :)

Entering the contest has no real downside.

Entering the contest with the best idea you think you will ever have has a theoretical downside, if you truly believe in your heart of hearts that you will be able to get it produced and promoted on your own steam through some other avenue and really hit it big.

As others have suggested, that's possible, if vanishingly unlikely without having some means of building up your reputation and profile as an RPG author first. Not saying you can't make it happen, but the odds are against you. The best thing you can do for yourself if you DO want to self-publish is to first find a way to get your name out in front of RPG fans in a positive way. Ironically, this contest is one of the best avenues to do precisely that.

Publishing your RPG stuff isn't just about having great ideas, great writing, and the ability to lay out an aesthetically pleasing product; it's also about getting someone to pick it up off the shelf (or figurative electronic equivalent for online PDFs) and put their eyeballs on your product for more than two seconds. You have to give them a reason to not just glance right past it. Having a name that people recognize isn't the only way to do that, but it helps a lot, especially if you don't have boobies on the cover... :)

Seriously, though, if your best idea is so entwined with a bigger THING that you honestly believe you are going to market commercially, then you just have to be creative enough to think of something else for the contest. Come on, it's 300 words, MAX. This is a challenging task, but it isn't rocket science. If you think you've got the chops to professionally market an RPG product, you had better have enough faith in your reservoir of creativity that you can churn up 300 good words any day of the week, and spend a little time making them better than just good, and a little more time still making them great.

Think of it not as Paizo quizzing you, but as you quizzing YOURSELF. "Do I have what it takes to do this?" If it takes a person a whole year to come up with one great idea, I would submit that that person is not quite ready for the pace of opportunity that might come along if they did win... or even just for the pace of the remainder of the contest. Those rounds come fast and furious once the contest gets rolling, and that's part of what separates contestants as the rounds go along. You might start out with a whopper of an idea in Round 1, and you've got a lot of time to preview the rules for Round 2 so you probably can gin up a good idea, but do you have the stamina and enough water in your well to keep good stuff coming round after round? It may feel forced, but it's not really. Maybe a little, but not much. You're banging away on one freelance project with the deadline coming, then another comes up, and another after that. You've gotta keep it coming.

Look, your wondrous item idea doesn't have to reinvent pizza, the wheel, and sliced bread all at once. It needs to be cool enough to show the judges some spark and give you an opportunity to tee it up and knock it out of the park in the contest. Then you can self-publish your magnum opus.

Like RonarsCorruption just said, though, it might be a better investment to lead with your very best idea and hope the spark you get from kicking backsides and taking names in the contest gives you the impetus to self-publish your NEXT magnum opus. Who knows, you might have a bunch of 'em in you!

All this is water under the bridge for this year's contest, of course, but for anybody with this thought a year from now, hey, it's food for thought.

Alison Doody
was hawt as Elsa in
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
with
Sean Connery

One of my favorite exchanges of dialogue from that movie:

[talking about how they both slept with the same woman]
Indiana Jones: It's disgraceful, you're old enough to be her... her grandfather.
Professor Henry Jones: Well, I'm as human as the next man.
Indiana Jones: Dad, I *was* the next man.
Professor Henry Jones: Oh... ships that pass in the night.

Man that resistance is dedicated.

Tru da F dat!

I love the paladin not understanding the metaphor of taking candy from a baby. Awesome. :)

Frank Langella
chewed every inch of the scenery as Skeletor in
Masters of the Universe
with
Dolph Lundgren

Mandisa wrote:

But I would argue that Rand was always front-and-center, he just was often uninteresting.

I believe that Mr. Nelson was specifically referring to the two (or was it three?) entire books in which Rand made no meaningful appearances at all, or perhaps was only depicted in the prologue or epilogue chapters.

Yup. Not that I don't like lots of the other characters (Light bless me but Nynaeve is one of my favorites), but to really move the whole thing along, we need the planets to orbit the sun (Rand) to tie the whole thing together. YMMV.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead
was in the tedious and insipid
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
with
Brandon Routh

David Fryer wrote:

I have actually heard from a couple of different sources that the second movie will actually be an "in-between" story that bridges the gap between The Hobbit and LOTR. Nothing official, but a lot of the movie mags are reporting this.

I've heard this, and I hope it's not true. I just don't see why a fill-in story is needed. I guess maybe if somebody got hold of Tolkien's notes regarding his original plans for a Hobbit sequel (I think it was something along the lines of Bilbo going broke and needing to go adventuring again), it might be interesting, but otherwise I'd rather just keep it to The Hobbit plus The Lord of the Rings.

As I understand it, the fill-in story is mostly about what Gandalf was doing during the Hobbit; i.e., him, Galadriel, and that crew of high-level NPCs invading Dol Guldur to take on "The Necromancer." I'm not sure how much, if any, of it is devoted to the 50 years or so between the end of the Hobbit and the beginning of Fellowship.

I have seen two different reviewers claim that they could tell which parts were written by Jordan and which ones were written by Sandorsen, but what one said was Jordan's style the other claimed was Sandorsen's. It isn't that he is so much better, but that his ghost writing is about as seamless as it can possibly be. Of course, having large sections in the middle that were written by Jordan, and having Jordan's editor both go a long ways for that. Also, the Sandorsen written books benefit from being closer to the end, so they are picking up steam.

Whether it was all there waiting to be done, or whether it's a fresh pair of eyes and hands to do it, there is some hardcore slash and burn on dangling plot-threads. The pace has definitely picked up big-time.

Really, I think a big part of the improvement has been remembering that *Rand* is the main character in the series, and advancement of the meta-plot requires him to be prominently involved. The other characters are all still pursuing various goals and plans, but the focus of everything is squarely back on Rand rather than all the other characters kind of running around in their own isolated circles. Things are connecting back up, as they should be.

atheral wrote:

I actually pretty much did this. What I found was key to the rewrite (which were surprisingly fewer than I was expecting and simple) was instead of rolling for the randoms as the game progressed I did up a spread sheet and preplanned all of the encounters for the duration of what the trip should be (thanks to several others on this board for the original suggestion and the person who did the time v. distance calcs). After I had the scripted list it was pretty simple to alter the encounters (aurora gives a +2 bonus to will saves instead of its caravan bonus for example).

Could you post your modifications. I have a 6 person party that is finding caravan combat dull (aside from one player, who loves the caravan minutia), and I'm dreading running/modifying The Hungry Storm given nearly 20 possible caravan encounters. I'd love to see what you did, or at least a few examples so I can get started.

For reference, the caravan encounters were created based on the benchmarks in Table 1-1: Monster Statistics by CR on p. 291 in the Bestiary. However, as has been pointed out, those CRs were based on the operating principle of a PC party, with 4 PCs vs. one opponent. However, the mistake that we made, apparent in retrospect, is that the caravan isn't 4 PCs; it's *ONE* PC. As a result, those target CR benchmarks ended up 4 CR's too high.

This means you basically have two choices:

1. Give the PCs in your party the ability to create their own "caravan combat" roles. In essence, your caravan would get up to 4 attacks per round of caravan combat (assuming each PC used their "caravan action" to fight). You'd also need to increase the overall hp of the caravan. I haven't done the math on that, but I'd guess a rough eyeball would be to simply double the caravan's hit points.

OR

2. Use the caravan combat rules as-is. Make no changes there. Instead, re-benchmark the encounter stats based on a CR 4 lower. Reduce the DCs for Security, etc. checks by 2. Look at the caravan CR that you see in the module, then use the following conversions instead of the base combat stats you see there:

CR 5 - AC 12; hp 15; Atk +2; Damage 2d6
CR 6 - AC 14; hp 20; Atk +4; Damage 4d4
CR 7 - AC 15; hp 30; Atk +6; Damage 3d8
CR 8 - AC 17; hp 40; Atk +8; Damage 4d6+2
CR 9 - AC 18; hp 55; Atk +10; Damage 8d4
CR 10 - AC 19; hp 70; Atk +12; Damage 7d6
CR 11 - AC 20; hp 85; Attack +13; Damage 6d8+3
CR 12 - AC 21; hp 100; Attack +15; Damage 10d6

This should give you properly calibrated challenges for the caravan acting alone against the challenges placed in the adventure.

None of this is official or RAW, of course, but if you're looking for an authorial suggestion that should better fit the numbers, feel free to use this if you'd like. :)

AWE-SOME!!!

Jason Nelson wrote:

At any point of their trip, but preferably early on, Ulf can sit down with them and some maps and say "Here's the Path of Aganhei. It goes from Unaimo here, up and around past the Steaming Pits of Gheit, then past the southern faces of the Alabastrine Peaks, cuz you know we sure wouldn't want to go anywhere near the top of the world! Then after we clear the Alabastrine Peaks, we'll veer south, making for Dead Man's Dome. It used to be a trade station, but they said some nameless hero held off an army of giants and helped the merchants and folks escape. Supposed to be haunted but I doubt it. Past Dead Man's Dome, we go down into the Ruun Uvas basin to Ul-Angorn, the first town of any size on the far side of the Crown. Then up and over Ovorikheer Pass and down to the Osman Confederation, through the lake country there, and then over the tundra to the Wall of Heaven. One last pass to traverse, and we're back into the warm lands beyond!"

And that's really all that's needed. You are quite right, Jason. The players will like to know where they are going and how they'll get there, and even help take decisions on the route.

Which brings me to my previous post on why is it better to follow the path of Aganhei than to travel near the coast, avoiding the high ice. Any comments?

I'd suggest it's for a couple of reasons:

1. Because the ice near the coasts is vastly more unstable and subject to constant movement throughout the year, making it impossible to reliably map it or establish landmarks, and putting caravans at much higher risk from crevasses and other natural hazards.

2. Also, since there's more moisture nearer the coasts, you actually would have vastly more snowfall there. While you can have white-out conditions on the High Ice due to wind alone, the prevailing weather patterns would suggest that snow would be a much bigger problem closer to the sea.

3. It may be that the less-severe temperatures nearer the seas would mean larger monster populations to menace caravans.

The Path of Aganhei thus offers a stable and reliable route that can be mapped followed without much chance of changing suddenly, where the ice is fairly stable and only rarely will collapse, where the weather is far more predictable (clear, cold, windy), and where the temperatures are low enough to keep a lot of monsters elsewhere without being so cold that it freezes the caravan.

It's the Goldilocks path of the happy medium--not too much this, not too much that, just right.

Caterina Scorsone
was in
Teen Knight
with
Kris Lemche

You're all welcome.

Bookmarked!

Noi JITAH!

Email them. ;)

Some of us have public email addresses, and the worst thing that could happen is you get a polite 'I'm busy' from a writer. Of course not everyone does this full time, and it varies by person if they're going to be interested in a given project, or have other projects already in place, etc.

Ditto from me.

It never hurts to ask, but be polite and not pushy. Freelance writers have cyclical schedules, and at any given moment they may have a big load of stuff coming due, or they may be in a valley with nothing going on. It probably helps to have a clear explanation of:

1. The project (subject, length, connections to other products)
2. The time frame (when do you need it)
3. The pay (what are you offering)

Any of the three could be a deal-breaker. It might be a subject the writer isn't interested in, or they just can't do it when you need it, or the pay you're offering isn't enough for them to justify doing your project vs. another project (or whatever other demands they have on their time in their life outside writing, be they family, job, church, sports, etc.).

I don't mean to discourage you from contacting whomever you wish, just to suggest that several things have to all be right for you to get the "Yes, I can do that!" reply you want. Be prepared with the information your target will need to decide, and you'll be several steps ahead of the game. Good luck!

Enlight_Bystand wrote:

For Gencon next year Paizo are releasing Ultimate Equipment, which from the little we've heard will have a significant amount of items, including select wondrous items from RPG Superstar.

So I've read. The rest of my post was pretty much trying to restate my view as to what such a book should contain. Last I heard, UE isn't going to do it for me. It'll be the first rules hardcover I skip. Oh, I'll snag the PDF, but that's it. Why? Because last I heard it's going to compile as a reprint all the material in several other books I already own, much of which aren't magical in nature. I've forgotten what else about the book was a turn-off, but basically as I understand it the thing's maybe 30% interesting-to-me. I just wanted to take the opportunity to wave the "this would be cool" flag one last time, in case it matters. Who knows. Maybe the gang is re-thinking the contents of UE and this puts them over the edge. Shrug.

But thanks for trying to help out by telling me about it.

My experience working on the book tells me that your expectations about the proportion of reprinted and non-magical material in Ultimate Equipment are not accurate. If what you are looking for is a metric crap-ton of brand-new magic items, this is your book. If you end up not liking the new magic items and such, that's one thing, but I'd suggest giving it a look rather than deciding sight-unseen that you're not interested.

Is it just me or does the Dead Man's Dome encounter come way out of nowhere???

I mean the idea that Ulf says, "yeah there is this hill where we can fight off an undead army... oh and yeah there is a rumor about some undead dude up there" is completely baffling. No build up, no clues that said dead man up on the mountain might help fight an army of undead creatures... sheeeeesh. As a GM I'd have to do a whole lot of prep work to make that encounter sound even remotely reasonable.

Not really. The problem is that you're thinking of having Ulf just tell them right at the moment it appears. That DOES make it come out of left field. Thing is, he's been over this route plenty of times. He knows all about the place and has been there before.

The solution is just have to have Ulf talk about their route over the Crown *BEFORE* they go up there. Dead Man's Dome is a well-known landmark along the route. At any point of their trip, but preferably early on, Ulf can sit down with them and some maps and say "Here's the Path of Aganhei. It goes from Unaimo here, up and around past the Steaming Pits of Gheit, then past the southern faces of the Alabastrine Peaks, cuz you know we sure wouldn't want to go anywhere near the top of the world! Then after we clear the Alabastrine Peaks, we'll veer south, making for Dead Man's Dome. It used to be a trade station, but they said some nameless hero held off an army of giants and helped the merchants and folks escape. Supposed to be haunted but I doubt it. Past Dead Man's Dome, we go down into the Ruun Uvas basin to Ul-Angorn, the first town of any size on the far side of the Crown. Then up and over Ovorikheer Pass and down to the Osman Confederation, through the lake country there, and then over the tundra to the Wall of Heaven. One last pass to traverse, and we're back into the warm lands beyond!"

Boom, a one-paragraph travelogue along the early part of the trip that establishes Dead Man's Dome as a known landmark with a small bit of local lore about it. You don't ever need to mention it again, throughout the whole crazy traverse that drags them up to the top of the Crown after all. As they start heading back to get back on the trail, they pull out their map and it seems like the natural spot to connect back onto the trail. He's not telling them about it cold; he's reminding them of their earlier look at the maps.

It's no different from the scene in the movie version of "The Two Towers" when Frodo and Sam are caught by Faramir's rangers at Henneth Annun. In character, Faramir and his lieutenant look at a map of Middle-Earth and remind us, the audience, where they are and where Saruman, Rohan, Minas Tirith, and Mordor are and what they are doing. These are things we had explained a while back in the story, but after a long trip we need a new "establishing shot" to remind us of the landmarks of the story.

That's what you're doing - re-orienting the PLAYERS to the geography and landmarks of the Crown. Their characters probably would remember, but in-character you are having Ulf re-establish where the PCs are relative to the locations on the map and where they need to go next to get back on track. The nearest dot on the map: Dead Man's Dome.

Once the undead army starts tailing them, combine that with the re-orientation, and now instead of a "Hi, let's go here!" suggestion out of the blue, instead it turns into an in-character realization that the caravan is in trouble, leading them to think, "Geez, this is probably the only semi-defensible spot for our caravan for hundreds of miles in any direction. I guess it's Dead Man's Dome or bust. A bad chance is better than no chance, right?"

It doesn't take a lot of prep work. A little bit of foreshadowing goes a long way, and when you get close you remind and reorient them to the map. Badaboom, badabing, done.

Wow my spelling and grammar really suck late at night! I think a Worldwound AP is inevitable - it's been begging for one from its inception. To do it justice it would need to be hard, really hard, on those poor adventurers.

A Worldwound AP is the one I'd most love to see. As to what they ACTUALLY have in mind for after Shattered Star, we will have to wait and see, but I have a good notion it's gonna be pretty cool.

Wut, awesome official clarification is awesome \o/

Ah, but "official" clarification is NOT truly official. Only SRM/SKR/JB issue those. I can tell you only what was in my head as I was writing the rule, and how I'd write it differently in retrospect. But, if you like the RAI rule, by all means use it... :)

seekerofshadowlight wrote:

Jason Nelson wrote:

The intent WAS to break the size limits, but I forgot to address the existing rule on oversized weapons and so the RAW ends up with an ability that is not very useful. Mark it as a FAQ question and perhaps at some point SKR, SRM, or JB will issue an official errata clarifying the issue from a RAW perspective.

What kind of wording would you have put in place?

I second that. If you're willing, Jason, I'd love to hear what the RAI were for this class. (Then I can break the rules and run it that way!)

Also, I'm fairly certain you've made pretty much all the cool stuff in recent books. APG archetypes, UC stuff. You should have an official list when people click your name or something.

Aw, listen ta you, I'm blushing. It would take a long while to list all the stuff, but I did recently post a list of the products I've written or coauthored. It's over on one of the Superstar threads here.

Jason Nelson wrote:

Massive Weapons (Ex): At 3rd level, a titan mauler becomes skilled in the use of massive weapons looted from her titanic foes. At 3rd level, she can wield melee or thrown weapons sized for creatures one size category larger than her own size, with a -2 penalty on attack rolls. Such weapons are always considered two-handed weapons.

For every 3 levels beyond 3rd, a titan mauler may choose to increase the size of weapons she can effectively wield by one additional size category, with an additional -2 cumulative penalty to attack rolls. Alternatively, she may choose to reduce her attack roll penalty when using oversized weapons by 1. This choice must be made every 3 levels when the ability is gained and cannot be changed. This ability replaces trap sense.

This has a peculiar effect on light weapons of larger sizes. Normally, a medium creature can wield a large shortsword as a one-handed weapon. A titan mauler, however, always treats such weapons as two-handed weapons. Should that be an optional ability?

Eh, it could be. I figured it was simpler to just give one rule for ALL oversized weapons than to start making exceptions. Besides, the thematics of the Titan Mauler are more about BIG guy wielding a BIG weapon... as in, a giant's hunormous sword or greataxe or whatever.

A Titan Mauler might consider it beneath his dignity to do anything other than go two-handed all out!

Jason Nelson wrote:

seekerofshadowlight wrote:

Honestly I am not sure on the intent. I feel it was not meant to break the size limits. If it stacked with Jotungrip it would be a bit less of an issue however as it would allow large one handed weapons in one hand.

The intent WAS to break the size limits, but I forgot to address the existing rule on oversized weapons and so the RAW ends up with an ability that is not very useful. Mark it as a FAQ question and perhaps at some point SKR, SRM, or JB will issue an official errata clarifying the issue from a RAW perspective.

Any update on this?

Sorry, my message board coverage is a little spotty lately, as I am banging away on an upcoming AP adventure and the deadline is looming. My short and wholly unofficial answer is that I'd probably leave the Jotungrip ability as is, since that ability is really more about using a regular TH weapon in one hand than using overly large weapons. However, the Massive Weapons ability is the one I'd probably change, to read like this:

Massive Weapons (Ex): At 3rd level, a titan mauler becomes skilled in the use of massive weapons looted from her titanic foes. At 3rd level, she can wield melee or thrown weapons sized for creatures one size category larger than her own size, with a -2 penalty on attack rolls. Such weapons are always considered two-handed weapons.

For every 3 levels beyond 3rd, a titan mauler may choose to increase the size of weapons she can effectively wield by one additional size category, with an additional -2 cumulative penalty to attack rolls. Alternatively, she may choose to reduce her attack roll penalty when using oversized weapons by 1. This choice must be made every 3 levels when the ability is gained and cannot be changed. This ability replaces trap sense.

I think using a hunormous sword or throwing a giganticulous spear fits the theme of the titan mauler. Walking around with a cannon or ballista or tree-sized bow? Not so much. YMMV.

If you want something simpler and a bit more similar to the as-printed rule, you could also try:

Massive Weapons (Ex): At 3rd level, a titan mauler becomes skilled in the use of massive weapons looted from her titanic foes. This allows her to use weapons designed for creatures larger than her size, always treating them as two-handed weapons and applying a cumulative -2 penalty on attack rolls per size category of difference. The total attack roll penalty is reduced by 1, and this reduction increases by 1 for every three levels beyond 3rd (to a minimum of 0). This ability replaces trap sense.

Adam Baldwin
was in
Independence Day
with
Vivica A. Fox

yknow, as opposed to that OTHER Vivica Fox with a different middle initial... :)

Dennis Baker wrote:

So yeah, it IS a job, but it's easily the most awesome jobs I've ever had.

More reasons if you need them:

Getting your NPCs pictures drawn by amazing artists.

Getting your maps drawn professionally. (I still get happily geeked when I remind myself that Chris West did my Sothis map.) :-)

+1 to this as well. I always like seeing what the art order comes back as for things I've written. Sometimes it's neat. Sometimes it's Awesome. Sometimes it's COMPLETELY MIND-BLOWING!!! :)

And also +1 to what Dennis said about seeing or hearing about people playing with a thing you've created and having fun with it.

It *IS* work. It requires discipline and attention to detail and sometimes you just gotta grind even when you're tired and wanna go back to sleep or go watch "Highlander" for the 42nd time or have to put off raking the leaves or whatever.

But it's still an awful lot of fun at the end of the day.

FallofCamelot wrote:

See this is why I'm not entering. I'm not sure I want to win because that will turn my hobby into my job. I'm pretty sure that will suck the fun out of it.

Trust me. It's still a whole lot of fun. And, quite honestly, writing for Paizo (or any company as a freelancer) helps you get better...as a writer, as a GM, and as a player of the game.

+1 to that

Also, as for the objective evidence that RPG Superstar is a lot more effective than just "working your tail off," let's use me as an example. The first thing I successfully published in gaming was a series of webcolumns on the WotC website, basically GMing advice columns. From 2002 until February 2008, when I finished in the Top 4 of the initial RPG Superstar, here's what my hard work netted me in terms of paid gaming publications (spoilered for those who don't care for the specifics, as the final point is below):

Before Superstar? A fairly consistent web presence but just 5 modest print publications.

After Superstar? I think I lost count, but it's a been a BUNCH! :)

Coincidence? Hmmmmm... I think not.

Hard work can take you places, but hard work plus winning or showing well in RPG Superstar can take you a WHOLE LOT FARTHER!

The surest sign of a good idea is that it makes other people say, "Wait, you mean we haven't always had one of those? How did we not have that? Why didn't *I* think of that?"

I remember thinking that about the hurricane gloves in year 2's contest. Perfectly obvious, except that they weren't, and that's what made them AWESOME!