Mark Moreland's page

Hey folks!

With the release of this month's scenarios tonight, two new experiments in how we handle multipart experiments have gone live. I'd like feedback from the community (organizers, GMs, and players) about which of the two methods you prefer, how you think rewards along these lines could be improved, or if you think trying to reward people for playing arcs in order or consecutively is stupid and shouldn't ever be done again.

Now, before people start suggesting it, the current release schedule contains very few instances in which we can release two scenarios of the same tier in a given month, meaning we can't put out a full series in fewer than two consecutive months. I know that's an issue many people have with multiparters, and should we ever change our release schedule, it's something I'll keep in mind.

When providing your feedback, it's very helpful for me to know whether you see yourself mostly as a player, a GM, or event organizer, as that will help me understand from what angle you're analyzing the two approaches.

Thanks for your participation and for taking the time to let me know what works for you and what doesn't so we can continue to make the campaign the best it can be.

Now Available!

Does anyone know if I can legally play part II before part I?

It is legal, but there is a boon that you can only get if you play both parts consecutively, in order.

And yes, the image on the cover is indeed a tengu riding an axe beak.

You are welcome.

Now Available!

As it is known with the Ruby Phoenix, the winner of the once per ten years tournament gets a relic from the vault... Any recommendation on what I should allow my PCs to choose from as a GM?

Whatever they want! Let them come up with something and lo and behold, there's one on the vault shelf right over there! Or, if there's a particular story item you want to propel them to the next plot hook, consider making that an attractive option for them.

Likewise, Elaine Cunningham's "The Illusionist" involves a character from her novel Winter Witch. I think it's a prequel but I'm also not certain.

It is a prequel, because something happens in the short story that is indirectly referred to in the novel as having happened in the past.

On a side note, I was curious why the "focal point" of the season was the Ruby Phoenix Tournament, when that was to come out in the middle of the season.

If we tie a Module (or any other print product) directly to a Pathfinder Society season in the future, we'll likely do it as the season opener or conclusion. That's one of the many things we've learned in this grand experiment.

Having said this... I'm going to agree with Clark's gut instinct. As an author, I'm not ready. One of the alternates really deserves this spot, because I'm not sure I understand Golarion or Pathfinder with the depth necessary to be a real Superstar.

I also didn't plan my time around actually advancing in RPG Superstar--I'm knee deep in wedding planning, neck deep in job interviews, and I'm going to be on vacation without a computer from Feb. 2-9.

I wanted to commend you on your professionalism, even if it meant you dropped out of the contest. One of the most admirable qualities in a freelancer, especially one we like and who we want to give work to, is the ability to turn work down when real life or other projects would make one unable to do the job. The fact that you recused yourself to make way for someone who now has a shot at winning in your stead says very promising things about your character. So next year, when you enter again, not only will you have an extra year to learn the rules and hone your craft, but you'll also know that you already show signs of being the kind of person we want to work with here at Paizo.

Scott Young wrote:

then Ruby Phoenix module,

Quick question Mike...

Is Ruby Phoenix Module going to be added for PFS play using the current Module rules? Or will you be waiting for 4.1 guide to come out to authorize it for PFS play?

Fixed that for you. And pointed Mike to the question.

A Lesson in Taxonomy takes place in the past as well, as it involves Varian as a Pathfinde before meeting Radovan.

Really? Then why are we still trying to get this stupid hair braid activated? ;) (Quest for perfection 2 came out December. part 3 comes out tomorrow)

That arc started before December so that's why it's an exception.

All metaplot scenarios from last month (December) to the end of the season assume the events of the Ruby Phoenix Tournament have already taken place. You are best served running that before any of the scenarios that take place

SPOILERS!!!!

Look for the Ruby Phoenix logo in the upper lefthand corner of a scenario's cover to see if it plays into the season's metaplot.

What airport do I need to fly into since I am not familiar with Redmond Washington. Thank you.

Sea-Tac

Since gems are sold at full price instead of half, you can simply sell the gems and use the money to buy the same value's worth of diamond dust. This transaction is already assumed in the wealth calculations for Pathfinder Society scenarios, though like Dragnmoon, I'm not sure you're talking about a general game or a Pathfinder Society-specific scenario.

No, it is the same scenario. When we rereleased Mists of Mwangi as 0-05 instead of just scenario number 5, it operated in a similar way.

Lol. My group's paladin used acrobatics, climb, and swim to see how the effects of different forms of exercise had on the disease.

This type of creative justification for using the skills you've got is exactly what I had in mind when I designed the encounter. Josh changed how it worked somewhat in development, but I think it works better now.

Ultimately, PCs should be encouraged to look at their character sheets and see what they're good at, and then find a way to use those skills to help Laurel. If that means they use Survival or Knowledge (nature) to go out and find rare components in the woods, or that they use Perception to help her find a particular reagent that she "just knows she has around here somwhere," or that they use Diplomacy to talk some annoying peasants away who keep coming and insisting to speak to Laurel, or that they use Sleight of Hand to help cut extremely fine slivers of a particular mushroom, or etc., etc., etc., as long as they hit the target DC, they should be able to assist. This means someone with an 8 Int and 2 skill points per level is likely going to have one shot at helping, but that's a tradeoff one makes when building a character.

Too me it seems he is arguing another subject all together, Development time, which is not related at all to what I am speaking too.

The exclusive scenarios are not going anywhere. Our most active volunteers love being able to run them and players like playing something they know that not everyone gets to play. We produce as much content as we can on a monthly and annual basis, and always do what we think is in the campaign's best interest, even if that means producing less, higher quality content.

Development time—and by extension, editorial resources in general—plays a huge part in this discussion because it's the common denominator for every piece of material we release. Perhaps you're shouting into an echo chamber because you aren't addressing this issue and everyone else is.

Surprisingly, Jason's not the one with an infamous cache of booze at the office. Who those employees are, I'll leave to speculation.

Sort of. The temple is of Tianjing origin, but beyond that I don't want to give anything away.

Like I said, if you are not going to make it a Bonus Scenario because it is too much work, I would prefer it not being exclusive and open it to everyone.

It's already a Bonus Scenario (though capitalizing that may be unnecessary, as it's not an official term we use for exclusives). In a month, it will no longer be exclusive, and will be open to everyone. I'm glad I could meet your request without needing to change too much around at the last minute.

But soon you too can run it for new players in your area who didn't get a chance to play it under GM Extraordinaire Miles.

Walking was interesting as the freezing hail/snow mix left a fun crunchy coating of ice over everything.

When I ventured out of my Fortress of Solitude this morning, I noticed the same thing and it made me hungry for crème brûlée.

It is pretty standard but I think our plows do a much better job than that mess of an intersection.

See, you just admitted you had snow plows. That puts you in a far better situation than we've got, where the entire county has like five. We also don't put salt or ice-melt down in most places in the city, because of all the lakes and the closeness to Puget Sound and the ecological ramifications of all that runoff into the environment.

Having grown up in the midwest and having lived in the northeast for a decade, I've seen my share of snowstorms, and while this isn't the worst in terms of cold, snowfall, or even the level of ice, it's not about knowing how to drive in it. When you're on a 50% or higher grade hill that's covered in ice, there's no amount of skill that's going to help you keep your car from going wherever gravity wants it to go.

Last year, when Midnight Mauler was being developed along with two scenarios that also released that month, it about broke the system. That's not something I plan to risk in the future, as I'd rather get out what we can reasonably get out to folks than risk getting nothing out instead. I will thus make no promises of how we will handle the exclusive scenario in Season 4, as we'll need to make that decision when it comes time to order next February's scenarios.

The only people for whom this is not a "new" scenario are those who either have a 4-star GM or VC in their area or who traveled to a convention where it was being offered. For everyone else, it's brand new.

when's return to the Blackros Museum due? :)

I promise at least one Blakros-related scenario a season.

You all have emergency generators for writing/editing right? :)

At the office, we have redundancies built upon redundancies* to keep the creative juices flowing, but most of us aren't at the office. Seeing other people around the area posting about power outages has me scared, cause my laptop battery will only last so long.

* Subject to verification by the reality verifiers.

Mind spoiling a few of the 'slight modifications'?

Please?

It's not really even spoiler-worthy, really. Mauler was written last season, when we had five factions with two missions each. We will need to eliminate one mission from each faction and create new missions (or repurpose the cut ones) for the five new factions as well as put in new mission handouts for the five new ones. I'll also be looking to apply some of the valuable feedback our Venture-Captains and 4-star GMs have given on the scenario in the last year to improve things that have an easy fix. And I'll be trimming the bottom subtier off, as we no longer publish scenarios with more than two subtiers.

There are some "test of skill" encounters between combats that might lend themselves more to some character types over others, but we tried to make sure that no one would be completely left out for all tests, and these are only one small element of the adventure. Anyone who can participate in combat (meaning any PC) will be able to enter the tournament and compete.

Sorry if folks aren't happy about releasing Midnight Mauler as part of the regular scenario rotation for Season 3. There are a number of reasons we went with this option, and in the end, there really was no feasible alternative.

Were we to simply make a year-old scenario purchasable, it would likely go mostly unnoticed, even if we sent out emails and made it a blog post. By releasing it as part of this season, casual players and GMs will see it listed among the other scenarios under the current season's offerings in the web store.

Furthermore, there simply wouldn't have been time for us to get out two new numbered scenarios next month along with a new exclusive to carry us through the rest of the season and into this time next year. With limited resources in the campaign and my development time split between Pathfinder Society and other projects, we had to go with what was closest to doable in terms of workload. As it is, there will still need to be changes made to the scenario (dropping the lower subtler, for example, and reworking some of the faction missions to cover the five new factions and only a single mission per faction) that will take time not normally devoted to a third Pathfinder Society offering in a month.

If folks have a real problem with any of this, I'm happy to take alternative suggestions for next year, but my response is likely to be: "if you want more resources for the Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign, spread it in your area and increase our numbers to justify more scenarios/team members working on it."

As of this evening, all scenarios through May have been announced and have product pages that you can find under the "Unavailble" tab here.

I'll be sending the web team product information for the next wave of scenarios soon and it should take them very little time to get it posted once they have it. Depending on the weather in the next few days, it may be early next week, but February-May scenarios should be announced before the January scenarios come out.

We were indeed off today. Any US postal holiday is a holiday for Paizo, as we can't ship anything out those days.

in 750 words, you need to make each one count. If something that isn't in the adventure is vital to understanding the adventure concept or the events within it, then it should probably be explained in the pitch, but every adventure is different. When I read a proposal, I want to be able to see if you included the right information and when you left things out in favor of more important information. That's part of the test.

As for turnaround time, right now I'm severely behind in reviewing submissions but every one I've received will get the same consideration. If you've written for Pathfinder Society (or another Paizo product) in the past, I might look at it briefly to see if it's worth assigning sooner, but in general one submitting should be patient and wait however many months it takes before you come up in the queue.

NPCs are generated using the rules in the Core Rulebook, so their ability arrays are calculated as listed above. Keep in mind that "fair challenge" is perhaps a misnomer, as the PCs are supposed to succeed at any challenge within three of their APL. What varies from encounter to encounter is the percentage of the party's daily resources that is assumed to be used up.

To the OP: as the developer of the Pathfinder Modules line, I wanted to address your concerns personally. Since you clearly took a lot of time to compose your thoughts and post them here, that seemed the least I could do.

I mean this as an honest criticism, so please forgive me if this sounds harsh (it is certainly not meant as a personal criticism of anyone) but the Modules line, as it stands today, seems like little more than a proving ground of sorts for adventure authors that Paizo is vetting or possibly grooming for bigger things.

That role is covered more these days by the Pathfinder Society Scenarios line, which, as a PDF-only product line involves less production cost for the risk, and the difficult nature of designing a tiered adventure for organized play allows us to really test people in a crucible of design difficulty.

Let me explain. First, it is a well known fact that the opportunity to write a module in the PF Modules line is the grand prize, if you will, of the RPG Superstar contest. So, one out of six of the adventures that we'll see in a year of the PF Modules line is written by a newcomer to the industry, and that's a good thing. Cultivating fresh talent is critical to the future health of the gaming industry that we all (presumably) love. However, it also means that Paizo is accepting a certain level of risk. This is, after all, the professional maiden voyage of someone who won a contest, which leads me to my second point.

That's true; it is a risk for us. That's why we only offer it to the winner. But that's a risk we're willing to take to give people the incentive to participate. You'll note that the runners-up were offered Pathfinder Society Scenarios, which have smaller word-counts (and thus less pay) and are less prominent as they're never printed and sold in stores. But one module a year by an untested author is an ok risk, as far as I'm concerned, in order to promote RPG Superstar and to truly reward the person who lasts to the end and comes out on top.

The Pathfinder Modules line is bi-monthly. I believe that a two month gap in the line is intentional because many of the developers in this line are not full time employees of Paizo and thus there is the risk that the initial drafts, reworks, etc might not arrive on time or at a level of quality that Paizo is comfortable with. I'm guessing that the two month gap between adventures is a safety net to allow Paizo time to recover from an adventure author who drops the ball for whatever reason.

I am the primary developer on the Pathfinder Modules line, and I am a full-time employee at Paizo, so that isn't the reason for the bi-monthly production schedule—not directly at least. While I work on this bi-monthly line and handle all the outlining, assigning, art ordering, revisions, and general freelancer back-and-forth as the adventures are written, I'm also doing the same same thing with the Pathfinder Society Scenarios line, which involves two scenarios a month. Thus, in a two month period, I'm personally overseeing, from start to finish, five adventures. To add another 32-page module on top of that would simply be more than I (or anyone, for that matter) could have time for and maintain both the high quality we strive for at Paizo and a semblance of sanity (not to mention a marriage and social life). Paizo is growing, and it may be that we take on more developers as time goes on who can help with some of the workload and enable this line to go monthly, but that's not something we have specific plans for at the moment.

Third, the PF modules line has been, at least up to now, a 32 page softcover. I believe that this, again, is by Paizo design as an intentional risk management firewall against a new or inexperienced adventure author getting in over their head with a project too large for them to handle. And, of course, poor sales on a 32 page adventure is a more easily absorbed loss than a 96 page super adventure that sells poorly.

This comes back to the same issue as above. Development of the adventures in our Pathfinder Adventure Path line (which usually come in around 55 pages, on average) are a full-time job for my fellow Developer, Rob McCreary. Doubling the size of the Pathfinder Modules line would necessitate the hiring of an additional person to take on development of it, as that amount of work is enough to occupy someone's plate all the time. As Vic pointed out above, it's also not something we can vary from month to month, and even changing the product length (and thus price) on people who have been subscribing for going on 5 years no would likely result in more cancelled subscriptions than it would net. That is the real risk with making changes to the format of the adventures, not a fear of a freelancer dropping the ball. We trust all of our freelancers to be professional and turn in the absolute best material in the industry, and we wouldn't assign someone to a project if we didn't think they could do it.

Or, to put it another way, I understand that there is great reluctance (justifiably so btw) in making any significant changes to the very successful Pathfinder AP formula (6 adventures, monthly, starts 1st level, finishes at 13th-17th level), but why can't the PF Modules line be more dynamic in its content, format and even release schedule?

As I said above, our subscription model means we can't be dynamic with the format of books that belong to subscription-based lines. You'll notice, for example, that our forthcoming Rise of the Runelords hardcover is not part of a line, as it wouldn't fit within what our subscribers tend to expect from month to month. That said, I feel the content of recent modules has been very dynamic. Adventures such as The Harrowing and The Ruby Phoenix Tournament are stories and types of adventures that we haven't done anywhere else, and that, at least internally, really excite us in terms of non-standard adventures we'd like to run or play. Coming up, we have The Moonscar, in which high-level PCs travel to the moon to face demons in an outer space jungle. That's pretty non-standard if you ask me, and not something we could do with any of our other product lines. The Modules line, as a relatively low word count line of one-off adventures is actually the perfect place for us to do weird or experimental adventures that might not be everyone's cup of tea. After all, if something doesn't interest you, you aren't committed to running five other adventures around it, and can simply not use that single adventure.

Hollow's Last Hope, Crown of the Kobold King, Revenge of the Kobold King, Hungry are the Dead, Tower of the Last Baron and Treasure of Chimera Cove were loosely connected, but that trend seems to have stopped in the modules line for the past year.

With only six adventures a year, one of which we're committed to having as the annual RPG Superstar module, that leaves only five to work with for linked adventures. And if the level range or concept of even a two-part arc isn't to people's liking, that's a third of our annual production run that we risk having lower sales on, as opposed to the normal sixth that we risk with any product. At the moment, there are no plans for other linked modules, but I wouldn't rule it out as something we'll never do again.

What we have done this year, however, is link a module (this month's The Ruby Phoenix Tournament) to the metaplot of our Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign for the season, thus synergizing the two product lines and adding an additional level of continuity to the world as a whole. If folks like this, we may do other crossover modules down the line.

The most obvious, to me, is the mega dungeon crawl. Most of the ones that I've seen done well (ToEE, Ruins of Castle Greyhawk, Undermountain) are not going to fit into a 32 page module, but nor are they likely going to be your entire campaign. Rappan Athuk Reloaded and Slumbering Tsar from Frog God Games are two exceptions of mega dungeons that are, IMO, full campaigns but they include more than just dungeon delves in a specific site. The dungeons listed in the book 'Dungeons of Golarion' would make good candidates here.

I agree. These would make awesome adventures, and we've said for a long time that we'd love to do a megadungeon book. But as stated above, it can't be part of this line, as people didn't sign on to the subscription with that as a contingent. If we were to do one down the line, it would likely be handled like the Rise of the Runelords compilation coming out this summer. But until we have such an adventure that we're ready to publicly announce, we could always handle it differently.

'Sandbox with walls' areas, as I call them, are also good candidates. This is a valley, or a kingdom, or a forest, or some other geographic area that will have numerous encounters and sites for adventure in it, but it is designed specifically for a limited range of levels. 'The Valley of So-and-So' details 50 different encounters, for levels 7-9. It won't fit into a (single) 32 page module but it also isn't something that merges nicely into a themed Adventure Path. Nor is it necessarily an area large enough for an entire campaign. Falcon's Hollow is a good example; not coincidentally, the area around FH made for my favorite series of adventures in the Modules line to date.

That's actually an interesting idea. I think we might be able to do a series of adventures in the same region to do this sort of thing, similar to how the early adventures in the line were often set in Absalom or Falcon's Hollow, to provide a number of unlinked adventures for GMs to pick apart and use as they needed in a sandbox-style campaign in the same region. It's not really something that we've discussed since I took over the line, so the suggestion is certainly one I'll bring up in our next long-term Pathfinder Modules planning meeting.

Also, there is the 'event' type of adventure. Something significant is going to happen, or should happen, and the PCs either have to make sure that it doesn't or that it does. The event, whatever it is, is big enough that 32 pages isn't going to allow for enough detailed coverage of it, but an entire AP centered around the idea is going to end up stretching the PCs' patience (I felt like this by the end of the Age of Worms AP....cripes show up already, will you, Kyuss?).

Event-based adventures are really hard to pull off, even by experienced authors, and that's one reason we haven't done a ton of them. This month's The Ruby Phoenix Tournament is sort of an event-based adventure, but perhaps it's time to do another one in the future. It has been some time since we did one.

Maybe this is an area that Paizo has consciously decided to leave to third party companies. Certainly Frog God Games has scratched this itch for me up to now. But, when Paizo has enough confidence to branch out into online games and comic books, I have to believe that it can take a calculated risk on the Pathfinder Modules line in order to get it to that next level.

I'll note that both our online and comics products (as well as our various minis lines) are licensed to other companies, meaning they take far less resources than something produced internally. I too want to see the Pathfinder Modules line rise up your excitement ranking and this sort of feedback is exactly what we need to do that. Thanks for taking the time to post such extensive commentary.

No, as the space in which all gaming will be taking place is the same as where the banquet is being held. And that we hope most attendees are able to get into the larger-capacity banquet than in years past.

There is no standard expected format, but an author's ability to convey the meat of an adventure, her writing ability, and mastery of hooking the reader early are more evident in some pitch styles than others. Knowing what makes your words and ideas shine is part of what we're looking for in freelancers.

I currently have no plans to make public any open call submissions, whether rejected or accepted.

You can make any number of combinations of creatures of different CRs and get lots of totals that don't directly coincide with a CR on the table. What matters is that the PCs get the XP granted by each creature, trap, or hazard, regardless of how those totals work out. If you're concerned that the given situation will result in a difference of a few hundred from a CR 9 encounter, add a CR 1 riding dog to the encounter.

Ultimately, you should build an encounter that works for you and the party and apply whatever XP those challenges provide and worry less about what the tables say. They're already designed for a party of 4, so you should adjust difficulty to compensate for the extra PC anyway.

Since 6,000 XP doesn't correspond directly to a specific CR, you have to feel out what the actual challenge rating of the encounter is (you'll note the CR equivalency table doesn't list 5 creatures; the math never works out to get a perfect CR value with 5). In this case, it's probably closer to CR 9, which would make it extremely difficult for a 5th-level party.

If the enemies are built as a true mirror party with PC-level wealth instead of NPC-level wealth, they'd each get a +1 boost to their CRs, making the encounter a CR ~10 encounter. APL+3 is considered an epic difficulty, so be very careful with an encounter like this.

Any chance of any more Pathfinder Tales becoming available before the end of the month?

We just released a whole slew of Pathfinder Tales short fiction, bringing the line up to current in terms of released web fiction and Pathfinder's Journal novellas.

I can certainly sympathize with everyone who wants X out of the blog and looks forward to a new entry each business day. Two years ago I was in exactly that situation. Now that I'm on the inside, however, I know how much work actually goes into each and every post, even ones that are just "here's a new piece of art from Orc Pies of Golarion." There's a fine balance to be struck between putting in too much time in-house for something that ultimately nets us no income, and keeping people engaged in one of our primary means of reaching out to the community at large.

I just thought folks would like to know that even if we don't immediately (or ever) make significant changes to the blog, we're listening. So thanks for the feedback.

I can certainly sympathize with everyone who wants X out of the blog and looks forward to a new entry each business day. Two years ago I was in exactly that situation. Now that I'm on the inside, however, I know how much work actually goes into each and every post, even ones that are just "here's a new piece of art from Orc Pies of Golarion." There's a fine balance to be struck between putting in too much time in-house for something that ultimately nets us no income, and keeping people engaged in one of our primary means of reaching out to the community at large.

I just thought folks would like to know that even if we don't immediately (or ever) make significant changes to the blog, we're listening. So thanks for the feedback.

What do folks think of today's blog? Do you like the inside look behind the curtain of RPG Superstar and the guest blogs?

I have heard of at least one game store that charges $5 for entry to the game, but gives each player a $5 voucher toward a future purchase at the time. This guarantees the stores gets some revenue from everyone, and acts as a sort of prepayment plan for players who want to save up several months' worth of vouchers to get a hardcover or expensive board game or whatever.

Other stores charge a few dollars per player and give the GM a part of that as store credit in thanks for running a game there.

Any of the up and ups have some stats on how many events have been recorded over the last few years? Exponential statistics would help me sell Society to more engineers in my home town :P

We don't share specific numbers, but the campaign is doing very well. We've seen increased rates of growth with each successive season. We're well ahead in Season 3 of where we were in terms of reported sessions by this point in Season 2, for example.

Just subscribed. I've been thinking about it for a while, but with the pace my kids' campaigns are digging into them and looking at the current lineup -- no more waiting.

Awesome! Thanks for supporting the line. Hope you enjoy them.

I don't know if saying the Modules line is struggling is actually accurate. It's not our best-selling line, for sure, but it does what it aims to do. Could we have more subscribers for it? You bet. But it gets no less attention than our other lines, and I believe offers things that no other line does or can without changing those lines away from the formula that makes them the successes they are. While you are correct that we currently publish three different lines of adventures, each is aimed at a different goal, and thus they wouldn't really serve to replace one another if one of the lines went away.