Kevin Andrew Murphy's page

Party of 2 here as well. Thanks for organizing this.

This party sounds awesome. Sign me up, Kyle. And thank you!

I know this thread is "old", but I had to say it was really awesome!

Glad you enjoyed it. Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

I've discovered that some of the artwork protector envelopes--basically giant-size card protectors like you'd use for a baseball or Magic card for display and protection, rather than playing with--that I picked up at the San Diego Comicon fit these maps perfectly, allowing me to use them for tabletop use without damaging them and even let me draw on the envelope with projector pens.

Or you could put Oil of Slipperiness on the doorframe.

Can I confirm that the events of 'The Bonedust Dolls' occur after those of 'The Secret of the Rose and Glove' and 'The Perfumer's Apprentice'; but occur before the events of 'Thieves Vinegar' please?

So chronological ordering of the stories is as follows:

The Secret of the Rose and Glove · The Perfumer's Apprentice · The Bonedust Dolls · Thieves Vinegar

Thanks

J

The order of the Norret Gantier adventures is as follows:

The Secret of the Rose and Glove · The Perfumer's Apprentice · Thieves Vinegar· The Bonedust Dolls

Samurai wrote:

firefly the great wrote:

On the original topic, I just wish there were more scantily clad men. Most women put up with scantily clad women -- unless they are convinced there's some sort of political message to it. But add scantily clad men and suddenly all this male homophobia pops up, men act like it's physically repulsive to see an attractive specimen of their own sex.

The list of muscle-bound handsome men that show it off in media is at least as long as the women. From Conan and John Carter to Superman (skin-tight costume) to WWE Wrestling to shirtless action movie heroes and too many other things to list, it's all over the place. If this "male homophobia" is as rampant as you say, then why do so many men watch WWE, for example, where muscle-bound guys in little shorts grapple each other?

Nope, it's a very real thing and was illustrated perfectly on these very boards back when Paizo featured an idealized mostly naked dude on a Dragon issue for a Greek gods article. Some guys complained that they didn't want to be seen picking it up because they'd be "mistaken for gay".

Them double standards.

Edit-This one. Not actually Greek god specific

It's a double standard, but a real one.

Put a guy in a pin-up shot on the cover of anything and it will be assumed that any guy who's reading it will be doing so to check out the dudes.

Ditto with any woman reading it.

Put a pin-up girl on the cover of anything and it's assumed that the guys who are reading it are checking out the girls, whereas women reading it will be assumed to just be reading it anyway, since women are culturally allowed and even encouraged to check out the competition, whereas if a man's eyes linger on another man, he's assumed to be sexually interested.

Tiresome, certainly, but nonetheless real.

The purpose of cover art is threefold. The first is to advertise to the customer whatever it is he or she might want to buy. The second is to please the purchaser by reflecting his/her interests. The third is for the purchaser to display to the world to advertise his/her interests to attract like-minded individuals.

If you've got a cover you want to be read as "I'm looking to hook up with other D&D players" and the iconography instead is read as "I'm looking to hook up with men," you've got a problem with the third item.

It's like the time I once wore a tie-dyed T-shirt to the wrong part of town and had three different people come up to me trying to buy acid, the third actually explaining that wearing orange tie-dye on Tuesday on this particular street meant I was supposed to be the drug dealer.

In a perfect world I should be able to wear tie-dye wherever I please with no other meaning than "I like tie-dye," but the world not being perfect it can be misread. Ditto with holding a magazine with a cover with some pin-up guy on it.

On the subject of the grapewolf, that reminds me of one of my threads of logic after having watched the Dungeons and Dragons movie and trying to figure out why an eleven ranger would wear hot pink leather armor. I decided it was because there had been a hot pink heraldic deer menacing the merry greenwood ho and the ranger had killed it and had it made into leather armor which she left its natural color.

I would go with:

3). Durvin Gest, famous founder of the Pathfinders, and an unnamed member of the Decemvirate since.

Look at it this way: The Pathfinders start out by exploring lost Azlant and "discovering" amazing Azlant technology--the Wayfinders--which they use to track down all sorts of secrets and bring them back for the masters of the society to keep in their vaults.

This is a dead simple plan for veiled master. Once the main work is done of creating the "famous hero" persona, let him "disappear" on one final adventure, then take the place of a member of the Decemvirate who holds a swing vote for the council. Rinse and repeat as necessary over the years so as to puppet the council and thus the Pathfinder Society.

And I found it a wonderful way to pull it off. Requiring a spell to use it is a really nice touch, and I feel there's some mythological precedence for witches using magical mirrors to communicate. Thanks for the peek behind the designer's veil; it's always fascinating.

Oh, there's plenty of mythological precedence for witches with mirrors. The wicked queen from "Snow White" is the most famous, but in this case, Irrisen mirror magic pulls most heavily from the trolls' mirror right there at the start of Andersen's "Snow Queen."

Yes, the missing sonnet is for Balazar. But he shan't be getting it until he turns his biography in. ;)

Fun sonnet, Cat Daemon. The gods of Golarion are a worthy subject for sonnets...and likewise with the seven Runelords who, come to think of it, would very easily fit into a seven-part standard crown...but for the nonce I've got a bunch of paying work to keep me busy, so I'd best get back to that.

Glad everyone's been enjoying these!

Glad everyone's enjoyed them, especially Reiko and Feiya.

The African Orisha spirit Oshun, whose name means "Sweetwater," is also heavily associated with bees, honey, and for that matter, sacred prostitutes.

Oshun is also a lot nicer than Calistria, except when she finally loses her almost infinite patience, in which case she'd make Calistria look positively mild by comparison.

It would be nice to see a picture of a Mwangi interpretation of Calistria. While all the depiction of the wasp goddess have thus far been quite hot, as is appropriate, it would be nice to see a depiction who isn't so white. Ditto with all the gods and goddesses who didn't previously have mortal ethnicities.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

The Broken-Hearted Crown of Golarion
(A Crown of Six Sonnets Awaiting the Seventh)

By Kevin Andrew Murphy

Imrijka, the Inquisitor – “For Love of Mysteries”

Who knows what may be summoned with a cry?
A ghost, a demon, or a frightened boy
Still brave enough to seek what might destroy
Pharasma’s peace? He could not tell me why
An infant came to be left midst the ruins.
He only told me that he held his knife
And let the Gravecharge priests decide if life
Or death should be my fate. Perhaps some bruins
Had raised me as their own? I was quite wild,
A half-orc girl, a green-skinned mystery–
Until three eldritch strangers came for me,
And two of them both claimed I was their child,
But horrified, I shied from their embrace....
A woman in this world finds her own place.

Lirianne, the Gunslinger – “For Love of Wonder”

A woman in this world finds her own place.
My sister Suzeressa tended home
While little Milliceene penned a tome.
As for myself, I was another case
Both dreaming of adventures like my ma,
Or like my pa, a crack shot with a pistol,
To be a shieldmarshal, cold as crystal,
Dealing death to any monster that I saw.
I trained and was rewarded with a post
Policing drunks and digging rights for wells
Until there blew a storm of ancient spells
That flung me to a monster-haunted coast,
And though my heart is light, my aim is true.
I did just as my father bade me do.

Hayato, the Samurai – “For Love of Honor”

I did just as my father bade me do
And served Lord Nakayama’s son Masao.
When he misused a falcon, I told how
The boy had erred. I swore my words were true.
Lord Nakayama took me as his ward
And had me taught alongside his own heir.
Then Masao perished. Only I was there.
Soon Lord Kaneka came with honor guard
But honorless, he taunted my liege lord.
My foster father could not let this be–
For honor’s sake, he fell to treachery.
I then dueled Lord Kaneka, and my sword
Paid honor’s debt. My name I will restore
Atop the heights where noble falcons soar.

Reiko, the Ninja – “For Love of Justice”

Atop the heights where noble falcons soar,
The Lord Entobe saw five temple towers,
The work of countless hands and countless hours
And countless lives the stones would crush before
His dream was done. It cut my childhood short.
My village graveyard grew in size as well
Until one night when three foundations fell.
Perhaps his dream displeased the Heavens’ Court?
My mother slipped into the house that night
Still garbed in midnight’s black, a ninja’s gi.
At night she taught her clan’s fell craft to me
Until one day her secret came to light.
“Run, little spider!” Mother bade me fly,
A trek across the World’s Crown from Minkai.

Feiya, the Witch – “For Love of Travel”

A trek across the World’s Crown from Minkai
With packs of porcelain and jade arm rings
My parents hoped to sell to Linnorm Kings
Instead brought forth their baby’s birthing cry–
Yet to the east, a coven lost a witch
So when I laughed and chased deer through the wood,
Nysima heard a third with maidenhood.
She wrought a child from rags and made the switch.
I learned that trick, a small but bloody spell.
I tried escape. They beat me black and blue
Just like the whinnis roots they bade me brew,
But when the red fox came, I bade farewell.
This time it stuck. I don’t regret my pact.
I’m free to roam the world and paths untracked.

Eando Kline, the Pathfinder – “For Love of Humanity”

I’m free to roam the world and paths untracked
Though now I lack my compass and its stone.
Wayfinderless, my past I now disown,
And while my heart may break, my soul’s intact.
I’ve foregone fame and its attendant joys
To save the world from evils from its past
For deep beneath the earth in caverns vast
An empire sleeps, and patience it employs
Awaiting those it views as rightful slaves.
The serpentfolk, forever may they sleep
And dream of nothingness in caverns deep,
Unhallowed crypts, and time-eroded graves,
And yet I fear they won’t, for when they wake
The pillars of the world itself will shake.

On the subject of delays, as a project for later (obviously not today, when the tech team is busy putting out fires) would it be possible to tweak the interface so as to check a number of different files for personalization and downloading at once? This would be especially useful, for example, when you've got a new laptop and are trying to update all your PDFs on it. Also it would be useful as housekeeping so you're not caught without a needed PDF later when there's a server error, an internet outage, or assorted other troubles.

A "check and download all my new purchases" button would also be useful rather than manually clicking to personalize each one.

Descriptive is always good. Keep "game" or "games" in the name.

I'd go with the construction of "local geographic feature" games, or, if you are lucky enough to have "local legendary figure" use that and follow it by "games."

Like this: Jersey Devil Games, Bigfoot Games, Blackbeard Games.

Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:

You never want to rest a book on its spine except while reading.

I am an archivist. My career is caring for books. This is not true.

Always store books during transit with the weight resting on the spine.
When a book is too large for the shelf, and you have to store it sideways, always store it with the weight resting on the spine.
Gravity hates books. If a book is stored spine up, there is a ton of force acting on the spine from gravity. Even an extremely high quality binding will fall apart from sitting idly on a shelf spine-up for a long time. When you factor in movement, it increases the stress and multiplies the angles it attacks the spine from. The spines on the Pathfinder books are not very good in the first place. I'm considering sending my CRB and APG to the bindery.

I stand corrected.

Admittedly I tend to pack my books pretty tightly in the bag and want the spines facing up/out for ease of reference.

My solution is the same as Christopher's, if less classy: Jansport messenger bag I've had since college, with expandable zipper. Holds books remarkably well as that's what it's designed for, and it's not particularly damaging to the spines since I place all the books in it spines up. You never want to rest a book on its spine except while reading.

As for the question of "What's good?" from 2e, the green-covered Celts, Vikings, etc. historic setting books are particularly good for playing games set in those times or in fantasy lands flavored to resemble them. For example, anyone running a Land of the Linnorm Kings adventure would find a lot of useful stuff in the Vikings book since it's mostly culture and text as opposed to rules and statblocks.

Always a delight when this comes out. Glad to be a part of it.

It appears that Games Workshop has unleashed the power of the Streisand Effect. More than one group of science fiction writers is currently planning a Space Marines anthology in protest, and one group has already registered the domain.

Just so long as you don't describe things as puce, or worse, sinople, your pretty good for not having color confusion.

Fun first chapter, and nice as well to see a halfling from a non-Europeanish culture who also has a life. Looking forward to the next installment.

Well, if you're character's from Golarion, he'd never have heard of Rasputin anyway so the surprise isn't much of a surprise. Some guy in another world you've never heard of is Baba Yaga's son. Okay.

Rasputin only gets interesting when viewed from the perspective of future history. At the time he was around, he was just a subject of political gossip like when Nancy Reagan was getting advice from her personal astrologer.

I'm wondering if the option to "play it like your favorite earlier edition" is just going to be "buy the PDF of your favorite earlier edition."

At the moment I'm underwhelmed and hardly excited.

A suggestion from someone who has chaired a convention (non-gaming) and attended a fair number of others. If a meet-and-eat can't be done at local restaurant and the real danger of rain in Seattle, could the ballroom (or similarly sized room) be reserved? Does the Seattle Airport Marriott allow outside catering or outside food to be brought in as a Potluck?

In my experience having been to an SCA 12th Night feast at a California Marriot, the will allow folk to bring their own food in for a feast, but want to be able to run a cash bar for any alcoholic beverages both due to laws and the bottom line.

Renting the room, however, would cost money.

Sounds like it works by RAW but many people would houserule it to not work.

It wouldn't be a houserule. The RAW also says these are "malevolent spirits," not "stupid spirits" or "obsessive-compulsive spirits." If a GM is forced to choose between "malevolent" and "move 10 ft away," he's going to be making a judgement call between two contradictory rules. That's not a houserule, just a ruling.

What about something that was only able to have hand written stuff on the "trade dress" background.

That cannot be confusing or stolen by other publishers.

What you're talking about is making stationery which can easily take non-handwritten stuff by the simple expedient of running it through a printer a second time.

My suggestion, since the "trade dress" is different for each AP anyway, is to make your own unique "trade dress" using the Pathfinder format and a few icons from the Community Use package. It will look neat and uniform, but won't cause confusion with official Pathfinder products. At most, someone will guess that it's something from one of the many third party publishers.

I would very much like a museum map. Useful for all sorts of scenarios.

You have to remember that these are malevolent spirits, not a telekinetic computer program that automatically moves dropped items in a random direction precisely 10ft from the spot dropped. If a haunted oracle decides to spend an hour with a bag of pennies dropping each one individually one by one, the spirit should eventually get bored with catching each one and moving it ten feet at random. The spirits are supposed to be malevolent, not obsessive-compulsive.

I consider having the haunted oracle flaw to be like being followed by an invisible toddler who will just pick things up at random and when you least expect it, like setting down your beer mug and having it suddenly slide to the end of the bar or fly into the wall. Poltergeist pranks.

As for it taking longer to find your stuff it your pack, that's because the poltergeist rearranges things while you sleep.

With item #5, I think the ads with the "I'm a monster" gnome and his pet badger, Francis, were universally beloved, pretty much. That said, comedy springs from pain, and what made the ad funny was the underlying tension of swapping the gnome to the Monster Manual and the tiefling to the Players Handbook, which irked a lot of players, myself included, on the basis of worldbuilding. Having the tieflings given giant horns and crocodile tails so they could be Draenei clones also didn't sit well with many players who preferred a somewhat subtler approach.

The troll and grapple ads, OTOH, were the match and the fuel for the edition wars.

Kicking over an altar is basically "Blasphemy for Dummies." Restoring one is "Sanctity for Dummies." Having the gods curse or bless those who do these things is pretty much basic PR.

If you want to desecrate an altar with absolutely no consequences, desecrate an altar of Aroden.

As for having a curse strong enough that you need a Limited Wish to remove it, gods know that Remove Curse is a spell since it's one that they grant and they also know that a savvy cleric is going to pack a Wand of Remove Curse to get rid of all those pesky minor curses. Ergo, if someone really ticks them off, they're not going to do a minor curse.

There's also the wise decision with Paizo to keep the world of Golarion relatively separate from the main rule books so that people who want to play Pathfinder with a different world--or even their own homebrew--don't have to pick up world-specific setting books to pick up essential spells that should have been in the core books.

Well, WoD is another matter, and the seduction system was originally set up for vampires to feed off of NPCs. I know that system quite well--or at least previous iterations, as I've written a lot for MAGE--and I'll say that you really need to apply common sense. Some people aren't going to be seduced by anything short of a two year courtship and a marriage proposal. If you need to seduce someone in ten minutes or less, you need to look for an easier nut to crack.

I didn't even notice the bastard sword. I was busy with "Dispater's Amicably Parted Ex-Wife."

Since he's the devil in charge of the treasures of the earth, I'm wondering what the pre-nup was like. Both for her and his current wife.

There are two issues here. One is the rating your particular game has. It's not a matter than bad things can't happen in the world, but certain bad things can't happen to the characters because they will squick the players too much, making the game unfun.

The other is that short of magical mind control, characters will not act out of just because someone succeeds a social challenge. A character who is morally opposed to one-night stands is not going to have their morals do a 180 spin just because someone is extremely charismatic.

This also goes with NPCs. And the GM is also free to tell exactly the sort of tale he wants to tell. I have many times done, "Yes, you seduce the barmaid. The next morning...."

I'd just skip to buying the flip maps which are already laminated. The Thornkeep double-pack is a particularly good deal if you collect maps, especially since if you're going to be buying the PDF, you might as well buy the flip maps as a pre-order while subscribing to the map line for a month. That will effectively give you the flip maps for $8 over what you're paying for the PDF, or $2 a side which is far cheaper than what Kinkos would charge for a color print that size not even counting the laminating.

I use my iPod as an extra backup drive, since what I'm backing up is text which takes virtually no space. And I've recently gotten into using Dropbox, which is very good for my needs.

Mostly though it's a matter of redundancy and the time to learn a new system relative to the time to use what you already have.

Yep, I've even got a story in one of them, "Baubles, Bangles, and Beads" in CHICKS AND CHAINED MALES. The cover is exactly the sort of humor you're describing.

Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:

Currently cloud storage is nice for businesses but isn't attractively priced for individual users.

$7/month for 100GB. That's not such a bad deal, I think. :)

$84 a year? For the amount I'd use it, not hugely attractive, and that doesn't even get into the security worries.

Plus there's always the worry of getting one of those corporate boilerplates about how they're either closing their service or jacking their rates.

Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:

Having the data stored by the company who originally sold you the data is more convenient for the user than having to configure some other online storage arrangement or having to leave a computer plugged in 24/7 in another house.

Whilst I can see this might be handy, and indeed I have redownloaded PDFs to access them because I didn't have access to the machine on which I originally downloaded them too, it worries me that Paizo may be being used as an alternative to Cloud Storage.

I really think it would be in Paizo's best interest to make it clear that they cannot guarantee the ability to download PDFs in the future.

No one can guarantee anything. Online hosting companies go belly up with frequency, new management teams come up with bizarre and draconian policies, and so on and so forth.

Cloud storage is also only as secure as the company its based in. I remember some years ago when AT&T pimped the ease and convenience of having your answering machine hosted on their servers so it wouldn't go out with a power failure. Then they blew a transformer in a heatwave and all the customers in the area were unable to get their messages for days.

Currently cloud storage is nice for businesses but isn't attractively priced for individual users.

You can find a Direct Link to the 2012-2013 Paizo Catalog here.

Bellona wrote:

And how long have people at Paizo been waiting to use all those puns/riffs on Game of Thrones for the Reign of Winter AP? :)

Since my first day on the job, much to the groans of (some) of my co-workers. But I couldn't resist it, just once or twice. :)

I don't see how you could resist.

George makes puns about his book titles too.

I don't really see why. Each AP is a new beginning of a new cycle. Next month starts the Reign of Winter. If a new player is interested in subscribing, I'd tell them to start with that--and not just because I wrote the fiction. It's because the first volume of any AP is designed as a starting point. With that, the Core Rules, and the Bestiaries, you can easily run a game. If the GM wants to include some cool monster from multiple volumes ago, chances are it's already in the Bestiary, and even if not, it will be in the online materials.

As for what you miss out on getting when it's first available, if something sells well enough--especially if it sells out--at some point down the road it will make economic sense to reissue it in some other form. That said, Paizo doesn't want to get into a situation where no one buys the APs when they come out, preferring to wait for compilations.

About the only trouble is the frustration of the collector's impulse to get one of everything, and the reader's frustration in not being able to read something when they want to due to the only copies in print having fallen into the collectibles market. But it's the way the book trade works. At least with PDFs there's a stopgap for those who just want to read the material, rather than have the physical ephemera in their hands.

Quite honestly, you may have multiple machines and no desire to figure out how to configure the filing on each one so you'll find the file precisely when you need it. Having the file kept securely in an online library to download on any particular machine when you need it is more useful than having the file you wanted somewhere in an old laptop in a house or apartment in some other city from where you are currently.

Having the data stored by the company who originally sold you the data is more convenient for the user than having to configure some other online storage arrangement or having to leave a computer plugged in 24/7 in another house.

Just subscribed. Looking forward to the plot developments.

Feet/inches I can barely live with, but any feat that forces me to break out the Internet in order to find out just what kind of counter-intuitive, arbitrary measurement do the Yankees and Britons use should die. In fire. At least 2000 degrees. CELSIUS.

I'm now having an urge to use ells in something. They're the standard unit of measurement for describing the length of troll's noses in Scandinavian fairytales.

Mechalibur wrote:

Dragon78 wrote:

Cold Celerity
+2 inituitive and +1 attack rolls in under 0 degree temp plus gain same bonuses for 1 round when you take cold damage.

Is that celcius or farenheit?

Kelvin, of course.

Jinx!

Dragon78 wrote:

Cold Celerity
+2 inituitive and +1 attack rolls in under 0 degree temp plus gain same bonuses for 1 round when you take cold damage.

Is that celcius or farenheit?

Kelvin!

;)

Well, it's a question of whether you want to include genies so weak they are effectively talking ravens or not. At a certain point, the reskinning can get ridiculous. If he can get his shoulder djinn for the same price as a raven, can another character get a shoulder dragon and give it the stats of a reskinned hawk, rather than taking Improved Familiar and getting a pseudodragon?

While mechanically Improved Familiar isn't as great a shakes as some other Feats, if you play the social game, there is a lot more status and prestige for wizards who have imps and shoulder dragons than those who have hawks and toads. Having a djinn to serve you has the same social prestige that you don't get from just walking into the bar with you pet cat.