Kensanata's page

I would love to see a product "real soon now", but I'm afraid that pushing for it will just result in less editing. And I love good editing jobs. :)

What can you do...continue to show an interest in this.

I'm still playing 3.5 and as far as I'm concerned, just make it available as fast as possible. No conversion necessary, as far as I'm concerned. I'm buying it anyway.

I just ordered the first two issues of Fight On! They describe themselves as "The premier fanzine for the old-school renaissance." And I found it via Grognardia, so I guess it will have an old-school vibe. If the print quality is ok I switch my KQ subscription from PDF only to Print.

why would anyone who has the old 3.5 books buy the Pathfinder stuff?

The player of the grappling barbarian in my game also commented on my website where I have my review (as Paizo only allows 2000 characters I had to shorten it a bit).

Here are some points he made:

I really liked the atmosphere of the adventure. Not something I would necessarily want to run over a campaign, but for a one-shot it was perfect. The somewhat bitter ending (we did pretty well, only allowing ~250 deaths) left me a bit crestfallen, especially moments after I grappled the [final foe], killed him with one last twist of the armor spikes, and ripped off his helm! But clearly that was an important theme of the adventure, and like I said, I really liked the overall flavor.

The war of attrition was a bit tough, I think. [...] As the grappling barbarian, I ended up being healed for 170 points of damage over the course of the adventure (3.5 times my hit points, hehe). Wands were not helpful, they were necessary.

Spoiler:

The possibility of permanent blindness and the persistent ability damage of the poison magnifies the fatigue the party must endure over the course of the adventure.

I think if we had found more clever and non-combat ways of solving problems, we would not have been in nearly as bad a shape. It was unclear to me how many options were specifically called out in the text, or how much of it would have relied on us convincing the DM to let us try something. In any case, we solved most situations by violence (which suited my barbarian fine).

[...]

Rating: 70% (recommended)

I've posted a review now that we finished the module. My players liked it. The fights were quite tough, but the surprising problem was this:

We are half way through the module, and we're liking it. We started it on Easter and will finish next week (a "two shot", I guess). The powergamer in the party decided to try a spiked armor wearing grappling half-orc, and it worked very nicely. After the fireworks went off, I started playing Tom Waits' The Black Rider and Frank's Wild Years in the background. My players liked it.

I'm a bit concerned about the last fight, though. As all of this takes place on the same day, the party is already scared of tackling more fights for fear of wasting all their healing and all their remaining spells... Having it all happen on the same day really puts spellcasters on their toes!

I have a few friends who are in town for the holidays and I wanted to run a gamemastery module for them.

It depends on your jurisdiction. In the US, you'll have to trust in Fair Use if Paizo grants no exception.

Here in Switzerland, there's an limit to copyright for personal use, and personal use is described as being within your personal sphere and within a circle of people close to each other "such as relatives or friends". Thus, if you're in Switzerland, sharing the PDFs with your close friends should not be a problem.

The only explicit exception to this article are computer programs.

the way the current women iconics are portrayed in the artwork so far is great!!

But that CR 6 typo is responsible for you getting TWO of those CR 9 (not CR 6) constructs at the begging of the adventure and their overall difficulty due to reach and damage reduction should have resulted in an EL 9.

I strongly recommend using only one tentacle monster, or provide strong warnings for your players. Crunshing slurping noises as if giants were being butchered, a mass of tentacles visible through the windows whether they plan on looking through them or not, that kind of thing. The monsters can be beaten using magic and by drawing them into the corridorm, allowing you to fight them one after another. But running into the room = certain death. :)

One of my players also commented on the session on my blog. He notes that the rogue should not have been able to backstab the high-level barbarian and concludes by saying he would "strongly discourage anyone from taking a rogue." If you're planning to backstabbing a lot, he's probably right.

So, we played through it all in about ten hours. Nice!

I liked how each fight was easy to run because they were all essentially one-trick ponies. Players feel good about this, because once they find a way to beat them at it, it's an obvious success.

I loved the fight against the

I loved it once the captured one of the villains

The first fight ended with the sudden death of our fighter. That was a shock for the gaming table. We rebooted the game and the second time around, they were a lot more cautious.

Of Appendix I we only used Zharep Apul. It truly was but a one-shot.

The big social encounter in area 2 didn't really work for our group. Nobody had strong diplomacy skills (the pregens come with a single Cha +4), and going in turns went against the sense of urgency the players felt. Thus I basically let one player handle all encounters until he was delayed and had another player take over. That worked ok.

Thanks for a nice Sunday one-shot!

I will be starting a GameMaster module right now and wanted to print out the "Meet the Iconics" pages for each of the pregen characters. It turns out they're not easy to find on the site. Can we have them all together somewhere, easy to find and print? These blog posts add a paragraph or two of fluff which is always nice.

So my regular games are on hold for the holiday season. I asked around to see if anybody was interested in a game for Dec 23 and maybe another day before New Year, and found four volunteers. I then showed them DCC Sunless Garden and all the GameMastery modules and asked them to pick one.

And they picked Gallery of Evil!

So I started doing some serious reading. Hopefully I'll be able to post a play review in two weeks. :)

I'd like to be able to have Google Reader check it for me like it checks messageboard posts here. […] I may just be missing something, seeing as Kensanata says that you can use bloglines to check it. Anyway, the normal way I've been trying hasn't worked.

And the internal links work. I guess Google Reader is smarter about guessing the base URL. :)

I read the blog via Bloglines. I like it! I read every post.

My only real gripe is that you use relative URLs in your posts, therefore I cannot follow any links when I read the article in my feed reader. The result? "…head on over to the Blog Feedback thread on our messageboards…" will point to http://www.bloglines.com/paizo/messageboards/paizo/websiteFeedback/blogFeed back

Grrr. And it happens with all internal links: Previews, screenshots, forums, products: So everytime I want to click a Paizo link, there is a little aggravating moment. So if there's one thing you'll change, make internal links work in the HTML used in your RSS feed. Use absolute URLs.

Yep, worked for me. I was thinking Easter Islands and Frankenstein... :)

Too bad Amazon Germany is telling me that the book is being delayed. New estimated shipping date: 05.11.2007 - 07.11.2007. I hope for you that it means its really selling well elsewhere. ;)

The authors of the Lost City of Barakus mini campaign from Necromancer Games suggest just that: Let the players gain only half XP.

Thanks, delvesdeep. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants – it was just a paste and copy job. Since I haven't read the AP from beginning to end, my problem is that I don't know what to foreshadow. You're input is appreciated. I will look for more things to add.

Got my email today! :D

The physical copy must not be far behind.

(Switzerland)

Plus I got my Dungeon #150 today. :)

Oops, fixed it.

For anybody else who's interested in the photoshopping part: I've found some threads on EN World about map drawing... In case you want to check them out: Cartography Workshop, or Making Campaign Maps. (My own maps usually remain on the "scan sketches" stage.)

I, too, will start the AP in September. This is what I sent my players:
Shackled City Player’s Guide.
It's a remix of my house rules, stuff from therpgenius, who in turn got it from the book itself, and some formatting. It was mostly paste & copy. :)

That honestly sounds more like a setting/backdrop product than an adventure.

To take that to a new level: The wizard X lives in his tower at X, managed to steal item X from ruler of demiplane X, framing cult X in city X, etc. -- plain plot exposition. Maybe three pages.

A map of his tower, the setup for a fight, his magical defenses, why teleport won't work, what scrying will discover, knowledge checks, spot checks, handle many of the things high-level players will do with ready-made answers. Use this for three combat encounters (the band of high-powered assassin demons sent after the party, the falsely accused cult headquarter), each four pages including stats for unusual terrain, monsters, spells, or tactics.

This is the part that most resembles the delve format.

Total pages used: 15 pages. Add four maps, gives us 17 pages.

That leaves another 15 pages for intrigue and diplomacy. Use twelve pages for major NPC, and how they react to the situation. Noble hears of the stolen X from his seer, discovers clues leading him to the framed cult, sends militia, they will be defeated by cultists, cultists slay merchant prince in revenge to stir up a rebellion, noble calls mercenary witch hunters, rebellion supported by neighboring city state X, etc. Don't provide stats for all of these. In terms of the high-level party, these are all non-combat encounters. If the party wants to kill them all, they can. All we care about is the politics of X.

This is the part where this format diverges from regular adventure material, because we're not statting this out as combat encounters, and we're not really developing a flow-chart of events based on party actions. Instead, this is the raw material needing some improvisation by the DM if the players interfere. I think we can pull it off because this is a high level adventure. Combat is easy, but will result in non-optimal outcomes. The only important fights are handled in the delve section.

That leaves us three pages for resolution: Describe various endings. Cult got erradicated, wizard X gets to keep item X. Party defended cult and got blamed for stealing item X. Either they discover and defeat the wizard taking item X, or they defeat the original owners, fighting on wizard X's side. Provide some inspiration for the DM preparing the session as to how many ways of ending the adventure there are.

I mean, if they start things off at a "10", then how long can they keep producing content that can still be classified as a "10"?

Meh! I wanted this issue as part of my Dungeon to Pathfinder transition deal -- and it is no longer available! :'(

Will there be a PDF version eventually?

My party of six level 3 characters just fought Nughoak and three hyenas in The Distraction and barely survived it. I added the hyenas because the text mentioned an unspecified number of hyenas charging the characters. Nughoak escaped with 6 hp left. The main problem was that Nughoak managed to cast Darkness on himself, negating the party's Light spell they had cast on a stone. The effect was the he was fighting in Darkness, while they were fighting in a pitch-black cavern.

Nughoak: 20% miss chance.

Party: 50% miss chance, no Dex bonus to AC, and additional -2 to AC, moving at half speed, no line of sight and thus no spells requiring a line of sight such as Magic Missiles.

This basically condemned the Enchanter and the Sorcerer to stand by idly, and the Monk had been standing guard at the top of the rope and took more than ten rounds to come down.

It was tough. I cannot imagine what would have happened if only four characters attempted the fight, and Nughoak had attacked when half the party was still climbing down the rope.

Regarding the stats: I felt that Nughoak should have AC 19 (+1 natural, +3 studded leather, +3 magic shield) instead of AC 20.

Afterwards my party commented on the lack of warning. I guess I should allowed them a listen check to hear Nughoak casting Bull Strenth; I'm not sure.

Get mine here in Switzerland days ago...

The concept of 'modular' classes is very cool in my opinion. I can see that it would also eliminate the need for Prestige Classes and multiclassing, both of which would be a good thing in my opinion.

I'm reading Monkey by Wu Ch'Êng-Ên translated by Arthur Waley. I'm also running a Kitsunemori campaign right now, so I'm hoping for some Asian mythology inspiration.

Living in Switzerland, I can only envy you. Switzerland is served from the US directly, meaning I got my Dungeon #147 (!) today. I really hope shipping will improve substantially for Pathfinder.