Regarding the villain vs. organization thing, it's important to note that a good, adversarial organization needs a good villain or two within it. And, most good villains have an organization of underlings that serve them. The trick is knowing which element to bring to the forefront in your writing. If it's an assignment for an organization, don't make the villain the sole focus. And, if it's an assignment for a villain, don't spend forever and a day talking about his organization. Your writing should serve the subject matter without getting side-tracked. But it's also useful to include elements of the other component (i.e., hints about the villain or organization) in your writeup for one or the other. You just need to know when you're spicing it up vs. overdoing it.
Congratulations to those who got through and commiserations to those that didn't. One of my favourites has been knocked out, so particular commiserations to Andrew Marlowe, but I still have 2 in the running.
I'm looking forward to seeing the maps and encounters.
Neil, you're a champ, I really appreciate the time that you and the other judges put into this contest. I would hate to see any of the judges get burnt out by the negative people that can't help from being the short form of Richard in these forums, you guys deserve better than that. The silent majority needs to speak up and express their gratitude that you would take any time to help them become better designers. I'm learning a ton from your posts and I can already see the improvement in my practice attempts. I've explained this contest to several non-gamers and every time they give the same look and say the same thing, "they do that for free?". The chance to get feedback on my one 'freethrow' is amazing within itself, but the chance to learn from everyone's freethrow is unprecedented. Keep up the great work, don't let 0.01% that complain have an influence, the entire gaming community is growing stronger from your efforts. Time is the most precious commodity, I truly appreciate every minute you put into this contest, thank you.
Wait, you mean we have to do this again with monsters?
Congratulations sweetheart and thank you Paizo fans. Good luck to the Top 16 and best wishes to the remaining Top 32. You are all amazing. (And yes, I'm very late with this :-) )
I think we need to get a separate guild-hall thread set up for wives, girlfriends and other supporters. My wife can certainly relate to what you are saying, mamaursula. I know that one of her main motivations for cheering me on in this round is that a Top 8 placement ensures that I won't have to do this again next year.
Yeah, good luck my fellow 32. I feel a real fellowship vibe here, and I'm so pleased to compete alongside you all. I keep waiting on one of you to be a total tool, so I can feel justified in trying to beat them. Instead, I'm just constantly impressed with the caliber of people you all are. I just want to hang out, toss ideas around, and listen to stories with you all.
It's like being in a group of your favorite gamers, but not being allowed to roll any dice.
All Other 31: none of the rest strike me as particularly cool, useful, or desirable. I'd like to have a hit of whatever they were smoking in the judges chambers when they picked these, maybe then i could see their mojo. I'm not saying the mojo isn't there, just that i personally don't see it.
They sat in the night monarch vardo smoking a mixture of sunblossom, bottled time, liquid sunlight, and dustings of darkness while drinking resurgent flame (out of Cayden's cup) and watching a silhouette of the phantasmagoria duke it out with a shadow box. They plane shifted when they thought the cops show up, but it was probably just a teenager with a vexing spirit lamp.
I suspect that there might be a few other misunderstood geniuses out there that expected to find that the judges had a lengthy debatersation in regards to the (obvious) merits of their submissions, only to discover that they hardly blipped on the radar.
Not that I actually feel this way!
(maybe a teensy-weensie bit...)
Kevin, big kudos to you for actually saying what many people are thinking and feeling when they learn they don't make the cut.
I appreciate how hard it is to see YOUR ITEM didn't make the cut.
Oh, hey, what was that? All caps? Oh...there is a reason for that. Because we aren't judging YOU, as a person or a designer, we are only judging the SINGLE ITEM you chose to submit. That may or may not be a good snapshot of you as a designer. Kobe Bryant is a great free throw shooter, but he still misses on occasion. If you saw him shoot only one, and he missed that one, you would no more be able to say he is a bad free throw shooter than we can say you are a bad designer or person because we didn't advance your one item we saw.
So you think the best time to alienate customers by requiring them to purchase a whole new set of expensive books is when your biggest competitor is alienating theirs as well? Bad, bad idea.
See me now, a veteran, of a thousand edition wars
My dice are loose and fast where the winds of limbo roar
I've characters to roleplay, all here on these sheets
Hit points are all I'm made of...
How dare you say which rules are best for me?!?!
In honor of the 5th anniversary of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, as well as 10 years of Paizo, we invite you to return to your Pathfinder roots! Yes, it is time to go back to your bookshelves, and start rereading your Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path, your Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path, your Darkmoon Vale modules…and expand upon them! Give us your sidetreks into the countryside around Sandpoint, explore the flanks of Droskar’s Crag, or uncover new secrets hidden in the Vaults of Korvosa. Pathfinders, tell us your tales!
Goal
The goal for the fanzine is to create a collection of fan-created articles and supporting art set in Paizo’s Pathfinder Chronicles world of Golarion. In conjunction with the anniversary celebration at PaizoCon 2012, Wayfinder #7 will be focusing on Year One of the Pathfinder product line! Please use the products list below as your main references (as well as that handy-dandy PathfinderWiki)! In the case of a plethora of articles on similar subjects, preference will be given to articles that follow this theme. As always, crunch, fiction, and flavor articles are welcome! Also, artists be sure to note our Call for Art Submissions as well!
In addition, writers can submit to one of several regular series featured in Wayfinder:
Advice: Have some advice you want to pass on to new GMs or players to the world of Golarion?
Bestiary: New creatures to terrorize your PCs with!
Of Chance and Skill: Games, new to or adapted for Golarion, to play at your table!
Prestigious: This article is devoted to a new prestige class for the world of Golarion.
Realm Building: The Kingmaker Adventure Path introduced a lot of new goodies for building armies, cities and kingdoms. This column is focused on building upon those rules.
Side Treks: Side Treks feature short outlines for a sidetrek adventure set in a particular Pathfinder adventure, from the products listed below. One sidetrek outline per submission for this column. Please reference earlier Wayfinders for the layout for this article. Submission size: 325 words.
Tales from the Front: Fiction articles based on any of Paizo’s adventure modules or paths.
Weal or Woe?Two NPCs (including statblocks), one helpful, one not so much. Include hooks for the PCs to know (or hate) this NPC and how to use them in a campaign. Include a boon (Weal) and drawback (Woe) for the NPCs in your article.
Guidelines
Thou shalt not disregard canon, thou shalt build upon it.
Keep in mind thy audience. Keep it PG-13. No slash fic/porn fantasies, cheesecake/beefcake/fan service.
Short and sweet. Unless otherwise specified, article sizes are 750 and 1,500 words. These are HARD targets, not a range, so come as close as possible to these targets. Anything over 1,500 words will have to be pre-approved by the Editor-in-Chief.
Submissions used to defame, harass, or threaten board members are not tolerated.
Submission Instructions
Conditions for Submissions. All authors and artists must agree to have their works reproduced for this and other Wayfinder products, be it for translations into other languages (we will be responsible for the truthfulness of the translations), special publications, or use on a Wayfinder website. All of Wayfinder’s publications are NON-PROFIT, and authors and artists will be given proper credit where due.
Send all submissions to: wayfinder.fanzine@gmail.com with the subject line containing “Wayfinder #7 Submission”.
All text submissions must be submitted in DOC format (doesn’t matter if you use Office or OpenOffice). Note: Files sent in RTF, TXT, DOCX, or any other format than DOC will be rejected.
Do not use fancy fonts or colors or styles for formatting - these will get stripped out in the editing and layout process. Use the standard body font for the program you’re using - bold and italics are fine.
For tables, please make them tab delimited. Fancy formatted tables just get reduced to this format anyway.
Include your name and board name in your submission - example, “Liz ‘Lilith’ Courts”. Your entries will go through editing passes for clarity and concision. Depending on time constraints, you may or may not receive feedback on the editing process and your script.
DEADLINE: March 31, 2012, 11:59 Pacific. All entries will be handled on a first come, first serve basis. Some articles may be rejected depending on the final size of the PDF.
Advertising
Fan projects operating under Paizo’s Community Use Policy are welcome to advertise their websites and materials.
Third party publishers wishing to advertise their Pathfinder Roleplaying Game-compatible projects in Wayfinder #7 are welcome to advertise as well. Space is available for 1/4, 1/2 and full page ads.
Email wayfinder.fanzine@gmail.com for questions about placing an ad. Be sure to include “Wayfinder #7 Advertising” in your subject line.
DEADLINE: April 30, 2012
Paizo – Year One Products:
Module D1: Crown of the Kobold King
Module D1.5: Revenge of the Kobold King
Module D2: Seven Swords of Sin
Module D3: The Demon Within
Module E1: Carnival of Tears
Module J1: Entombed with the Pharaohs
Module J2: Guardians of Dragonfall
Module J3: Crucible of Chaos
Module LB1: Tower of the Last Baron
Module TC1: Into the Haunted Forest
Module U1: Gallery of Evil
Module U2: Hangman's Noose
Module W1: Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale
Module W2: River into Darkness
Module W3: Flight of the Red Raven
Adventure Path: Rise of the Runelords
Rise of the Runelords Player's Guide
Adventure Path: Curse of the Crimson Throne
Curse of the Crimson Throne Player's Guide
Classic Monsters Revisited
Guide to Darkmoon Vale
Guide to Korvosa
Harrow Deck
Yeah... I put Eberron pretty high because any setting that has a magic train, in my book, is at least two points above any setting that doesn't...
Average RPG fantasy setting is a 5. Which is where I put Greyhawk. I put Golarion slightly higher on that list mostly just because we have a lot more high-level content in Golarion than Greyhawk... including REALLY wild areas like the Worldwound or the Eye of Abendego or Nex or Geb.
It strikes me as still possible that there might be demand for a second stepping stone, if the first is a smash hit. People might just want more maps, pawns, and basic rules.
A Pathfinder Toolkit, which contains more maps and pawns, would be an awesome product for beginners and veterans alike.
But for now: Life is fun and rewarding because it's difficult, and at times, boring. Sex with a prostitute is instant gratification for money. I'm not here for that.
I want an alternate experience in a fantasy world. Not to have sex with a prostitute on my computer.
Enormous spaces exist because that is how geography works. Horses do not despawn because that is impossible. Cattle farming is a necessity in order to farm cattle.
Just because I want my car to become a statue in my pocket, my wife to house a 'on/off' switch and my job to be something that I can decide as to whether I will turn up to or not; such a scenario would strip life of its ultimate fruits, as would it strip my gaming of its fruits. Stop trying to ruin my fruits. I've had carrot on a stick and I don't want it anymore.
Well, my friend, look no further! Such a game exists, and it's as easy as opening your front door!
Hi, I'm Davor. You may remember me from such threads as "Intensify Magic Missile" and "AM BARBARIAN build", and I'm here to tell you about a new game that's just hit the market!
Are you tired of instant gratification? Is all that fast-paced, high energy action getting you down? Do you need a break from all that wealth and fame? Then boy, do I have the game for you!
It's called "Real Life"! That's right, "Real Life"! Why spend all those hours slaying monsters when you could be doing your taxes! Who needs epic weapons of mass destruction and busty waitresses when you could enjoy mopping up the urine stain of your very own, fully interactive house cat!
Now, you may be asking, "Davor, this sounds amazing! How can I get involved?" The answer will astound you. Simply turn off the computer, stand up, and turn around, and suddenly, you'll be in a world unlike any digital one you've experienced, complete with car payments, data entry, AND EVEN WASTE RECYCLING! Even better, you can get your friends involved too!
It's the ultimate interactive experience, and for a meager cost of a full years wages, you too can enjoy the epic thrill ride that is "Real Life!"
WARNING! "Real Life" may not actually be exciting and epic, and is likely filled with pointless grinds and mindless chores that contribute in no way to your character growth or development. Some side effects may include boredom, depression, and general lack of self worth. For treatment, visit your local game retailer.
Nobody who doesn't work for a publisher really understands the process well enough or the timelines involved to place the blame on any one department or group of people.
Trust me, the editors aren't the problem. I think we have the best editing team in the business. The problem is that errors happen and surprise deadlines happen.
If there is another playtest for the Advanced races book that is not the race building stuff then what would it be?
It's my understanding that we won't be playtesting anything else from the book.
And I'm pretty sure that Paizo agrees that the core races aren't all equally "balanced." They're close, but presenting them as equal in point value is something that we're no longer 100% committed to.
Not sure exactly how it'll all play out, but the feedback from the playtest was HUGELY helpful in that regard. Thanks, all! :-)
Removed a post and its replies. We really, really, really are tired of the edition war nonsense. Play the games you want to play, and don't denigrate others because of their preferred game system.
I think they have largely done or are doing those things. Short of Mike and Monte pulling off a revision somewhere just short of miraculous, I don't see how they would lure my gaming dollars away from those that stuck with me.
They could always just remove the no resurrect line from half-construct and bump it up to 8 just like plant. To be honest, Half-Construct is actually a bit expensive for what it provides. They need to toss low light or darkvision in there.
Add a racial ability in the "Other" section of "Resurrectable" that for a price allows a character that would not normally allow resurrection to do so.
This. It's something that could apply to ensouled constructs like Warforged as well as any construct "race" whose flavor made sense for it, like Soulbound Dolls according to their original write-ups in CotCT. (Heck, Golarion has a robo-goddess in it, constructs with immortal spiritual aspects aren't a stretch at all)
And about Living Constructs being closed content, the Lifespark Golem from the Advanced Bestiary is very much not, and Pathfinder has gotten a LOT of use out of that book.
Gotta admit, Half-constructs not being raise-able doesn't feel right either.
That said, I like the idea of their raising process working differently from the standard.
Um....you have got to be kidding me. I looked forward to this product with an open mind and open wallet. All I kept saying to myself was "please, please learn from WOTC...anything but random." Then we get this...just....plain....wow....
This reasoning is complete nonsense.
No, it's not. You pretending to have even the barest understanding of the realities of this business is nonsense. Read the thread. If you want to argue against the model, you have to actually understand the model first, and you plainly do not.
Quote:
Here's an idea: do enough market research and target groups at...oh I don't know a major convention (or two) and produce what people actually want. That way you don't have to worry about some figures not selling well enough.
THAT'S NOT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT.
Dear lord, people.
It's not about producing minis that people don't want. It's about being able to produce minis that everyone wants ten of while at the same time being able to produce minis that everyone wants one of.
Quote:
Which here's the translation on that: "You may pay your hard-earned money and get something you absolutely, positively have no use for...but hey we have to make the lich an extra sparkly color purple, so here's your fourth goblin stalker or whatever."
If you absolutely positively want a specific mini and can't stand the random packaging, buy it on the aftermarket from either Paizo or your local retailer.
Quote:
Here's an amazing idea...make a quality product and charge what you need to make a profit for it...done.
Congratulations, you've solved every business problem, ever. Why do people even bother getting MBAs, again?
Quote:
I am all for the visible product and like many people if you put all 40 in one box and slap $199.99 on it I'll buy it.
And then you'll have one lich and one goblin, and you'll kick yourself for suggesting such a myopic product model the first time you try to run an encounter featuring more than one goblin.
Way to go.
Quote:
But I'm not spending $4 a pop for random stuff anymore- enough is seriously enough. I was a MTG player for a decade and there was nothing like the sinking feeling of popping a booster to get "thoughtlace" as your rare. WOTC recreated that feeling when you pulled a chain golem (or whatever mini you personally have no use for) as your huge figure in the mini's line.
Now we get to enjoy this all over again....no thanks.
Welcome to the real world - the random model is required in order to get the minis line you're used to. Deal with it.
By the way, your reaction is not that of someone with an open mind or an open wallet. Just because you tell everyone that you have an open mind doesn't make it so.
Posts
