Mark Moreland's page

If SPEARHEAD FROM SPACE and the new series Blu-Rays have sold well enough, I think the BBC will look seriously at a Blu-Ray release. They'd have to do it in a way that appeals to new fans though, because the existing ones are unlikely to double-dip (or, for older fans who bought a lot of the VHS tapes in the 1980s and 1990s, triple-dip) given there won't be a big quality increase.

I believe they were able to make a blu-ray of Spearhead because it was filmed on 35mm (and is the only episode to have been recorded such). Anything that was filmed on video or that has only a 16mm transfer source won't gain anything from being on blu-ray other than the aforementioned efficiency of packaging and content per disc. Honestly, those are enough for me, and I'd gladly pay again for a single blu-ray set of each Doctor or even just each season of the classic series. If they can get a full season of the 2005 series in a slim blu-ray case for the new boxed set, I imagine they can get a full Hartnell or Troughton season in the same packaging, and those contained far more minutes of programming. The lower resolution should make the difference in time mostly a wash.

A large amount of our art is available for reproduction under the terms of the Community Use Policy. As long as you're not selling the product and use the images included in the community use package (either one of the bundled image packages or art previewed on the Paizo blog), your adherence to the policy should constitute permission to use the images. You can find the details of the CUP here.

Are the Paizo offices going to be closed on Friday?

Yes.

You can find the Advanced Class Guide Playtest forum HERE. Feedback and playtest reports posted there are more likely to receive the attention of the design team than those in this product thread, so head over there and let us know what you think!

I can't stop watching "The Night of the Doctor." I wonder if we'll get other mini episodes in the next 10 days. That would be 1 per doctor prior to the 11th... A guy can wish. But even if this is the only one, at least it's another appearance (and a conclusion) for a character who we never got the chance to know. I have a few other similar characters I'd love to see Moffat give this same treatment to.

Moved to Advice subforum.

I'd like to read something dealing with the iconics in novel format. Comics are great and all but can't get them electronically. Or can I? I might be missing something.

Dynamite distributes its comics digitally exclusively through Comixology.

After a collective editorial department heart-attack, we have confirmed that the files sent to the printer say "Pharaohs". The image posted for this product seems to have been made prior to the final changes being entered, and will be replaced to reflect the correct spelling as it will appear on the printed book.

Sorry for any confusion!

There likely would have been the most runelods of wrath (because they kept killing each other), and sloth (because they were least effective and therefore shorter lasting in their respective reigns), but to my knowledge we've never said exactly how many of any given runelord there were. Other than the two for which there was ever only one (pride and lust).

Will: Is there a horse I can look in the mouth?

I'm glad to see the "goblin" series is done (for now) and we're back to the heroes. The goblin comics just aren't interesting to me - there's no continuing story, and I really can't sympathize with them at all...

There are still two issues of Goblins! to come out. The two comic lines are produced in parallel. That one line hit a few delays isn't a function of the other line being made.

I hope this won't be the last big book of beasties.

Until we've announced a new product, it's generally safest not to promise we'll do one, as we generate way less rage when we say, "surprise! A new bestiary!" than we do when we say, "I know we said we'd do another bestiary but we were joking."

Dynamite is pretty good about posting a few preview pages of each issue on their website on a book's release date. You can check out the art in this issue here and decide if its to your liking.

1/4 of the deck is quests, while the remaining 3/4 are split fairly evenly down the center between faces and items.

I want to know what his deck makeup is!

Might there at least be a couple of mythic examples? Or will it be solely generic non-mythic stuff?

This book contains no mythic content but does offer some NPCs with CRs in the high teens.

Does each character get there own piece of artwork?

Yes.

None of the statblocks in this book are for specific characters, but rather generic members of different Inner Sea archetypes, like Pathfinder Society Venture-Captain, Red Mantis Initiate, and Usij Cabalist. That said, just because we didn't stat up individual characters in this book doesn't mean we won't do a book full of named NPCs down the road. In fact, I think a book like that is very likely at some point, it's just not on the schedule yet.

Sarenrae Sodom and Gomorrahing an entire city right above Rovagug's Prison? Has her alignment changed?

It takes more than one act of vengeance to shift a god's alignment. It took something completely unexplainable to change Dou-Bral into Zon-Kuthon, and it took the raising of the dead god Arazni to make her into an evil lich. What the referenced act did do to Sarenrae, however, was cement in her the importance of redemption before vengeance, and that has become a very large part of her faith in the millennia since Rovagug essentially tricked her into destroying Gormuz. Turns out one god trying to get under another god's skin works really well for sowing chaos in the world, if that's you thing (and it's certainly the Rough Beast's schtick).

I've stickied the thread so that it's visible to as many people as possible.

There's something missing from this picture, but I don't like thinking about it.

I have been off for a few days, so I haven't had a chance to respond to this yet. Given that I have literally followed Bowie around the country on his last few tours and dedicated much more money and time to my fandom of him than I'd care to admit with more detail than this sentence, I can't help but respond (with over 1,100 words on the subject, no less).

I think, looking at Bowie's work over the last 40 or 50 years, there are a number of throughlines that tie in well with the established domains in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. First, however, we need to determine what alignment he is so we can ensure the requisite alignment domains are out of the way before we start slotting in others. I'd place him firmly in the CN alignment, primarily because he's undergone so many shifts in style, persona, and collaborators over the years. That means he would have the Chaos domain, at the very least. This leaves four domains to fill with his portfolio.

Throughout his career, Bowie has possessed a nigh-unquenchable thirst to create and expand his artistic horizons, a drive that has only (visibly) lessened in the last decade. In addition to the 26 studio albums, 9 live albums, and 3 soundtracks he wrote, recorded, and released, he has appeared in dozens of films, 17 of which contained roles larger than simle cameos, he has also dabbled in painting and sculpture, most notably in the mid-90s while working closely with Brian Eno and Reeves Gabrels on the album Outside, which was itself inspired by the Peter Aykroyd book Hawksmoor, about an 18th-Century London architect who needs human sacrifices to complete his work and the investigation of such murders centuries later. With such a strong need to create and to do so in a fashion that propels the mediums in which he works forward and in new directions, I'd give him the Artifice domain as well. Currently, the Pathfinder core pantheon only has one god (Torag) who grants this domain, so adding another one will balance things out, and open it to nearly every alignment that couldn't get it from Torag's LG alignment.

Since he first stepped onto the world stage in 1969 with the release of Space Oddity, through his infamous persona of Ziggy Stardust, to his debut starring role in Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, space, aliens, and the vast expanse of the cosmos have been a theme in Bowie's work. From the haunting lyrics of his debut single (he had no singles released from his [first] eponymous album released in 1967), about an astronaut lost in space, to his adoption of the extraterrestrial androgyne persona of Ziggy Stardust, the concept of man traveling to the stars and of visitors from other planets coming to earth has effused his work. Thus, I'd give him the Void domain, which in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, is very much about the nothingness in space and the celestial bodies that can be found within, especially when once considers the subdomains thereof.

Another common theme in his work is madness, if not in the subject of his material, then in his personal and public life. Fame played a number on Bowie in the mid-70s, and he was documented in such films as Cracked Actor exhibiting all the signs of insanity, mainly due to the incredible amounts of cocaine he was consuming at the time. Songs such as “All the Madmen”, "Quicksand", "Time", "My Death", "I'm Afraid of Americans", "Breaking Glass", "The Last Thing You Should Do”, “Ashes to Ashes”, “Everyone Says Hi”, and others have all dealt with mental illness in some form or another, some more overtly than others. Bowie’s older brother Terry committed suicide when David was young, and between that and the consequences of his fame and such, Bowie himself dealt with a number of substance abuse problems and depression, paranoia, and the like. Thus, I think Madness is a very fitting domain for him, bringing his total up to four and leaving just one left.

This is a really tough choice, as I could go with either Magic, in part due to his obsession with the occult in the early 70s and his propensity to dabble in magical realism in his stage shows, movie roles, and music videos, as well as Charm, because he’s defined by little more than his enigmatic charisma. Between the two, I think Charm is a better fit, because it covers both him as a person as well as the content of his work, and provides him with a variety of domains that leave for a lot of neat character options to make a Bowie-like character.

I know that this doesn’t necessarily lend itself perfectly to being the god of goblins and trolls, but I think that one could make some fairly good goblin clerics of Bowie with these domains.

Now, as far as favored weapons go, that’s tough, because Bowie hasn’t really done a lot with prop weapons either on stage or in movies other than the six-shooters he used in Gunslinger’s Revenge (Il mio West). I thought that rapier might be a good fit for him, or even scimitar given his famous Ziggy Stardust “pirate” costume (inspired by a nice case of conjunctivitis), but neither really worked. There’s a knife called a Bowie knife, named after American pioneer Jim Bowie, after which then David Robert Haywood Jones named his stage persona, both because Davie Jones of the Monkees was already a famous musician and because “it’s sharp on both edges.” So dagger might work, but again, it didn’t seem right. Finally I settled on the ultimate pun favored weapon—an axe. You know, because that’s slang for electric guitar. Sure, I know that Bowie has always had a lead guitarist who was far superior to him in axe-skills, from Mick Ronson to Roberto Alomar to Reeves Gabrels to Earl Slick (who’s admittedly the least accomplished of the bunch). Nevertheless, Bowie has been playing guitar on his albums since day one, and almost never performs live without at least doing rhythm guitar on a number of songs. And even if Bowie himself isn’t known for his string stroking, “Ziggy played guitar” is a pretty iconic final line to what is arguably his most defining song. Thus, I’d go with the battleaxe as his favored weapon, since there isn’t just a generic axe in the game.

If you really want to dig into Bowie’s career, his music, and the symbolism in both, I highly recommend the blog Pushing Ahead of the Dame, and the seminal biographies, The Complete David Bowie by Nicholas Pegg, and Strange Fascination by David Buckley.

Haven't we seen a bunch of Falcon's Hollow already?

Yes, but such content is spread across at least five different books, several of which are either out of print or very close to being so. This book consolidates that information and expands upon it, and represents an update from the 3.5 rules that all previous Falcon's Hollow content was written for, allowing for easier expansion upon the setting by GMs and Paizo, should we choose to do more with the location.

One of the goals of this book is to give GMs additional material to work with if one of the several adventures set in or near the included settlements grows into a full campaign. Since it's reasonable to assume someone would build a campaign around the 5 existing adventures set in Falcon's Hollow, it's inclusion here is intended to make such a campaign richer.

Matthew Morris wrote:

+1 to the winners, -1 for the puns.

Unless your manager is known to have an affinity for bad puns and you happen to have a review coming up :D

Can you be my manager? I think Wes is keeping tabs on all my bad puns, and not for commendation at year's end.

Your suspicion is correct. If the card is gained during play, however, you can use it until it comes time to update your deck.

Pathfinder Society Scenario #4–02: In Wrath's Shadow, by Mike Shel, takes place in the ruins of Bakrakhan at the foot of Hollow Mountain. So while not about the dungeon complex itself, it is a standalone adventure that could be used in conjunction with the background/non-adventure content presented in Dungeons of Golarion.

Personally I'd like to see a Faction Writeup in the style of the Faction Guide for the Order.

Would you now? Interesting. If only... no, some things are best left a secret for the uninitiated. Patience, however, brings enlightenment.

You'll note the exact wording in the Guide to Organized Play indicates that "Pathfinder Society Organized Play assumes that every player has the following resources: the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook and the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play." Players are not explicitly required to bring these books to the game (as they would be if they were using material from Additional Resources) because they are already assumed to have them.

The listing of what a GM is expected to have at a Pathfinder Society session is preceded by the word "additionally," indicating that what the GM is expected to have to run the game is on top of what each player is already assumed to have.

With content in the Core Assumption, you're not going to be forbidden from using a feat or magic item contained in the Core Rulebook if you don't have a copy with you, but that doesn't mean it's not best for each player to have on-hand a reference of all the material needed to play the core of the game.

Mark Moreland wrote:

Define "near future"

I was sort of thinking the next year and a half, maybe.

Oh, that near. As James said, no, we don't have plans in that range. But given that the Cenotaph is tens of thousands of years old, even something we did with it in 10 years would be "near future," in a relative sense.

There were some errors in the Gormuz section (a few of the Spawn of Rovagug's names were mixed up), but there's one part I'm unsure of: there's a single reference that something called Gormuz was Rovagug's first and greatest spawn, but this is incorrect... right? Ulunat the giant beetle was the first Spawn to emerge, the tarrasque was the greatest Spawn, and there are no spawn named Gormuz... I think?

Evidence.

Look at how people in the modern day of the real world have conflicting views of what happened hundreds of thousands of years ago. That's what's going on with the legends of Gormuz. You'll note that the evidence you cite mentions that the claims that Gormuz was a cleric or the name of the first Spawn of Rovagug are attributed to certain Keleshites and orcs. Consider those myths or legends from those specific cultures rather than conflicting "truths." That said, if you think one of those explanations of the pit's name works better for your campaign, it doesn't really change much about the pit to simply swap one of those in for what this book describes, making the city in Ninshabur the legend in your game.

Define "near future"

Whether the Cenotaph was a source of mythic power while Zutha was "alive" isn't defined either way in this book. What's clear is that it is now, and was when the Whispering Tyrant visited it as a mortal. The exact nature of what makes it a mythic font are still a mystery.

So then, what makes Agmazar a kaiju, and not, say, the Oliphaunt of Jandeley or the Tarrasque?

The Oliphaunt and Tarrasque lack the kaiju subtype, and are thus not kaiju. If you feel that they'd be better as kaiju, or that Agmazar would be better as a not-Kaiju, adding/removing the subtype is a simple matter, though doing so will clearly have other mechanical effects. In any case, a creature possessing or lacking a subtype has no direct effect on CR, so making such changes wouldn't really affect anything but the flavor and some of the specific special abilities of the creatures in question. One thing to bear in mind with creature types and subtypes is that they are largely just chassis upon which a monster is built, but many creatures could reasonably be multiple types and still work within their given concept.

What you're referring to is not an officially sanctioned pregenerated character. We do not currently have one for Alahazra, though when we do, she will receive cure light wounds as a 1st-level spell as normal. The complete set of official pregenerated characters can be downloaded for free on the Player Resources page in the Pathfinder Society section of the site.

I'll also note that the page you linked to lists this statblock as appearing in the Pathfinder NPC Codex, which is untrue. For proper OGL section 15 attribution, it should refer to the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide. I don't see a link on that page to flag the content as being improperly attributed, however.

They just announced a set of two elite pilots and repainted TIE Advance minis representing the Emperor's personal escort. I imagine that even when they run out of new ships to release, they can go pretty deep to the well of alternate versions or expansions to the existing core TIE/[letter]-Wing craft. Between that and the scenario-based capital ships coming soon, I imagine we'll see a lot more before we get to all non-canon ships all the time. Even the base set has non-canon elements, what with Mauler Mithel and other expanded universe characters showing up in the pilot cards.Sure, he was in the Battle of Yavin, but didn't have a name or anything like that. We've only seen a single ship thus far that didn't appear in one of the movies: the HWK-290.

Mark Moreland wrote:

Luckily both the rules for the Pathfinder RPG and Arabic myth are available under license (or public domain) for fans to make their own versions of the almiraj (and even the jackalope) and share them to their hearts' content. I can't wait to see what you come up with for a proper almiraj, Gancanagh.

Yes, that is a challenge. Show me what you got.

Lol, I take it you're the creator of this Almiraj?

Nope, I don't have a rabbit in this race, other than to encourage someone who is both clearly versed in the traditional flavor of the creature and who has a clear vision for how that legend can be represented using the rules of the Pathfinder RPG to combine those two into a set of stats that works for them. I like to see people inspired by myth and legend transform those into monsters folks can use at their gaming tables. That is, after all, much of what we do when we make monsters for books like this.

Luckily both the rules for the Pathfinder RPG and Arabic myth are available under license (or public domain) for fans to make their own versions of the almiraj (and even the jackalope) and share them to their hearts' content. I can't wait to see what you come up with for a proper almiraj, Gancanagh.

Yes, that is a challenge. Show me what you got.

I am rather disappointed with the Starstone. (Edit: maybe not so much?)

** spoiler omitted **

Let's keep the personal attacks off this thread (and these boards altogether). Feel free to provide feedback to Paizo about the game or what you feel is acceptable customer service, but personal insults and ad hominem attacks are simply not welcome here.

I've removed a post and its responses to hopefully get the thread back into calmer waters.

I hadn't even considered the fact that the cards that are double-sided are never randomized and thus didn't have to be imported that way. Too bad I scanned them all this weekend already. Still need to import all the single-sided cards into the app, but since the double-sided ones are all done, I might as well just keep them.

As for storing each deck, I plan to make one deck for each card type and put it in one of the many drawers in the table view. I was just going to draw myself a key, but now that you mention the tokens, I will totally do that once that functionality is added. For simplicity's sake. I'll be starting with all the cards in the base/character add-on/Burnt Offerings set and just grow from there. I'm going to skip the Perils of the Lost Coast adventure for my digital playthough. Then I'll just keep a perpetual table going so I never have to worry about making sure the cards in my character deck are adequately removed from the boon decks so I don't throw off randomization of the remaining cards.

Vic Wertz wrote:

Charles Scholz wrote:

I say for future Basic boxes, have the whole box slotted and each slot able to hold 50-75 cards that you can customize to what you need, (no matter the card type) ...

Frankly, I'd be very frustrated with that box. There are 21 loot cards in RotR, and I don't want to have to put them in a slot where they're flopping around, or a slot where I have to mix them with other cards to keep them from doing so. On the other end of the spectrum, there are several hundred monster cards in the set, and when I have to seed a location with random monsters, I don't want to have to draw them from several different slots. Having them all in one slot means I can set the game up faster, and that means I can move on to the fun part sooner.

The ultra simple solution is to use a box without slots, but rather packs the cards into rows. Place labeled dividers between different card types.

Most likely I'm going to pick up a cheap white cardboard box (the kind people use for baseball cards) and transfer the game to that. I'm not a fan of the bulk and size of the current box, though I will miss the art on the outside.

...

Instead of looking at a chart to see (or needing to remember) where cards go, you just put them with their labeled divider. With planned expansions, you just include foam inserts that are discarded (or oriented differently) as space is needed.

I did this over the weekend, and it works great. Since I'd long ago abandoned manufacturer packaging to store Dominion, Thunderstone, LotR, Netrunner, and Star Wars LCGs, it wasn't too hard to set this up the same way. I made up some (admittedly shoddy) dividers for each type of card, corresponding to the different slots called out in the rulebook, as well as one for each of the adventure decks, and one for the Character Add-on. This way the cards that aren't currently in the game can be sequestered from those that I'll need quick access to, and I can add cards from them when I get to the respective adventures, or remove cards from the main box to them as I pull them out later in the game.

So far, running through one scenario with this setup, it didn't add any extra time to setup or gameplay, but I did spend a few hours sleeving all the cards, printing and cutting the dividers.

Being the Pathfinder collector I am, however, I didn't throw away the big box like I did with the boxes for all my other card games. It's just chillin' in the closet with my Christmas decorations. That way I can move this set back into it when the next base set comes out and I don't need to keep buying new sleeves/white boxes for each set when I'm no longer using the previous one.

Russ, heavy crossbow isn't basic, so Lem can't start with it; he'd have to find it in the course of adventuring. That said, once he has it, it's a no-brainer to swap it in for the light crossbow. There's really no downside to it in comparison.

Also, Lem is always going to be magic-heavy, simply by the nature of his deck allotment. Choosing weapon as his favored card type means the player always gets to start with a weapon as a backup for when his spells aren't going to cut it in combat. With nearly a third of his deck spells, he's likely to always have at least one in his hand, even if it's not his favored card type.

While the sling gives him the option of discarding it for another d4, he's much better off keeping it in his hand to continually gain the d6 on Combat checks. Since he's likely to keep the weapon in his hand all the time, you might consider the light crossbow instead, since that will give him a d8 on Combat checks every time. If you plan on using the sling's secondary power a lot to get the bonus d4, however, I'd go with that, as d8+d6+d4 is way better than 2d8 (avg 10 vs. avg. 9).

Thanks for the tips, ralsar. If and when you make that custom background, I'd be interested in seeing it. It should be sharable under the terms of the Community Use Policy.

Any advice for loading in all the cards, especially those with different content on both sides? The card import screen seems set up for decks of cards that all have the same back, making the importing of character cards, locations, and scenarios/adventures particularly cumbersome. I wish the app had better documentation.

Your best bet is to email such concerns to webmaster@paizo.com. The proper folks within the web team will look into it from there.

I tried this out tonight to get a feel for how Card Warden would work within the context of the PACG, and I'm not sure how it would work, even if a player were to scan all the cards.

I used the sample cards we've put up on the blog just to see how well I could generate location decks and then draw from them, and I couldn't figure a way to do it without knowing ahead of time what was in each stack. The only way I could do it was to make a different "deck" of each card type, then randomize each one and draw the prescribed number of cards from each one when generating the location deck. Then I had to go back to the deck organizer and manually create each of these decks from "box." I also couldn't find an easy way to remove the cards from their respective stacks so that I didn't randomly draw a unique item, monster, or ally from the box that was already seeded at a location.

So, asking as someone who'd love to play the PACG solo on my iPad while I'm on the bus or relaxing on my patio, how exactly does this program allow me to do so? Is there something I'm not getting?

There are plenty of martial classes that do use spells, Rangers, paladins, inquisitors, magi... what about them? Do we just make a book that focuses on only fighters, rogues, barbarians, and cavaliers and cut out the rest? That's why I had no issue with UC having spells because there are a lot of martial classes that use spells and it's silly to think otherwise. Lord knows I've used my bard as a martial class with casting.

If ISC leaves out cool stuff for rangers, paladins, bards, magi, etc because they cast spells, then I'd be heavily disappointed in the book.

The primary focus of this book will be character classes with no spellcasting ability. That said, partial casting classes like rangers and paladins will receive new content, but not any that focuses on their magical abilities. Since all classes capable of casting spells were already covered in Inner Sea Magic, we felt it was important to give the same amount of attention to those characters that can never cast spells. The fact that rangers and paladins overlap both books means they'll get content in both, the combination of which should equal about the same amount of new material as any of the martial-only or full-casting classes in their respective volumes.

Thanks for putting this together! While I know we'll eventually release more of the web fiction stories as ePubs, this is a great stopgap.

The printed deck lists are merely suggestions, not mandatory starting decks. Just swap out the card in question for a different one and you should be fine. After a scenario or two, each character's deck is likely to look fairly different anyway.

Stephen: I will beat you with all the Core Rulebooks!

Her full name is just Galfrey.