Mark Moreland's page

Who's Jacob?

I've added a spoiler to the OP to occlude specifics about the scenario in question.

Since PaizoCon is still a few weeks away, you also have plenty of time to create your own 1st-level PC with whom to experience the fun. We should have enough Tier 1–5 scenarios throughout the show that someone like yourself who hasn't played Pathfinder Society before should have something new to play every session, and you'll be able to play your own PC in the process.

No. You can use Escape Artist to assist another character's Escape Artist check. Escape Artist allows someone who's bound—it doesn't matter if the binding is a rope or manacles or a net—to escape those bonds using the DCs set forth on page 96 of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. It can also help them squeeze through tight spaces, like between bars. Assisting someone with a Disable Device check only helps them if they're attempting to disable a device like a lock. While this is certainly an option for a lot of characters, it does require that both the PC aiding and the NPC attempting to escape are trained in Disable Device.

Thank you!

No love for Balazar, Lirianne, Reiko or the unnamed Antipaladin.

The unnamed antipaladin isn't an iconic, so it's no surprise there's no love for him.

The tiller prestige award appears in a printed product, and thus any errata that we would publish regarding it would be released at the time such product was reprinted. Since we don't currently have plans to reprint the Pathfinder Society Field Guide (see this post by Vic about why we don't reprint most products), the chances of this prestige award being altered are not high. That's not to say it may not appear in a different source down the road with slight alterations, but again, there are currently no plans for that.

All that said, Timothy McNeil's analysis of why this prestige award grants a bonus on Escape Artist checks instead of Disable Device checks is correct. When untying knots or assisting someone else in escaping from sturdier bonds, you use Escape Artist. Modifying Disable Device would only help in situations in which you're picking a lock, whereas Escape Artist is more versatile in that it covers those situations as well as others.

If you have a local store that's not participating in Free RPG Day, letting them know now that you'd love to see them participate next year, mentioning specifically how many potential customers you know you could bring to the store by offering in-store gaming like this adventure, may be the impetus for them to participate again in the future.

Hip-hip-hooray! Congrats to both Mike and Dan, who I've worked with since the earliest days of my involvement in Pathfinder Society. Keep up the good work, gentlemen.

As always, we set our drop-dead date for convention scenario availability at one week prior to the convention to allow all GMs at least one weekend to prepare before the show. John or Jessica will likely be able to give a better estimate of what this month's scenarios' schedules look like, but we're still likely a few weeks out from when they hit GMs' downloads.

I fear our own Erik Keith may have some steep competition for best Iconic costume this year. Hear that, Valeros? Kyra's coming for you!

This thread makes me want to cry :-(. If I were a meaner moderator, I'd lock the thread and delete it and pretend this weren't all true.

Any word on the rumored DE movie that was in the works?

The special on Friday night at PaizoCon is a test run of the Gen Con special so we can work out any kinks in the format before we debut it on the big stage with 130 tables.

I'm GMing this today for a party completely composed of Lantern Lodge PCs. Kind of awesome.

Amara Li has a posse.

I'm eager to hear how this went!

If you have multiple PFS numbers, please contact mike.brock@paizo.com or webmaster@paizo.com to get those consolidated into a single account. No one should have more than one account on Paizo.com to begin with (that's why we allow aliases), much less multiple accounts registered for the Pathfinder Society.

In general, Paizo does not license other companies' intellectual property when producing products. We're heavily invested in the Pathfinder campaign setting and the Pathfinder RPG, both of which we wholly own; no licenses will ever expire or be revoked on either of those, meaning we can plan our business years ahead based entirely on our own property.

As has been previously mentioned, Green Ronin is doing a great job with this particular property, so if it's something you enjoy playing at your table, they're the ones to get it from.

I wanna see Sorshen, Alaznist, and Xanderghul. Although, Sorshen's the most interesting to me.

Krune's statistics will appear in Pathfinder Society Scenario #4–26: The Waking Rune, coming out in just over a month, at PaizoCon.

June scenarios are being released a week after the last Wednesday of the month in order to debut at PaizoCon. At the same time, July scenarios are releasing 4 weeks early to debut at the same time. This was always the plan, even if the website didn't know that plan because it's a computer and not clued in to the awesome stuff we have planned for PaizoCon.

So those that are to high level and can't GM their just sol.

Well that's nice great job!

Reporting data indicates that there are far, far more members of the Lantern Lodge faction who are below or within this scenario's tier than those that are too high level to play it. The scenario is thus designed to accommodate the greatest number of players, and we've made an exception to the GMing credit rule to allow this scenario to be applied to a character that otherwise couldn't play the adventure. If you're concerned you won't have the opportunity to GM the scenario, we encourage you to check out our Play By Post messageboards and the Pathfinder Society Online Collective Google group, which provide online opportunities for anyone to GM any legal scenario as their schedules and geographical restrictions allow.

Alecak wrote:

@ Michael Brock

Do we get the XP and gold for crediting this to a higher lvl character?

We are starting the Retirement arc soon and my cleric needs 2 more XP. Can i credit this to him and play one more to hit 12 or would i need to play 2 more games before retirement? Im ok with getting less gold if we can.

You gain xp, prestige and gold as normal for GM credit. The only thing different about GM credit for #4-21 Way of the Kirin is that you can apply it to characters over the level cap of 3-7. If you apply the GM credit to a level 11 character they would get the standard rewards from tier 6-7.

Quoted for emphasis. This is the correct way to handle this if you are applying GM credit to a PC above 7th level. A PC playing through the scenario must still be level 3–7. Whenever you apply a Chronicle sheet to a PC, that PC always gets the gold/XP listed on that scenario.

You get everything on the Chronicle as normal. The only difference in this instance is that you can apply the Chronicle to a PC that has already leveled out of the range of the scenario in question.

We get bonuses?

Drogon wrote:

thejeff wrote:

I was running off of the 2/month number that's been going around. And assuming that the various specials would remain special and not on that schedule.

They have to be on the schedule, because they have to be developed.

Different schedule I think. I could be wrong. Jessica Price was talking earlier about being able to produce two scenarios a month reliably.

I assumed those were the standard scenarios and things like First Steps and other specials were outside of that.

Obviously they'd need to be scheduled, but they don't have to be on the 2/month schedule. Especially if they follow a different format, they wouldn't really fit.

Everything has to happen on the schedule, whether it's one of our standard monthly products or an additional project for a special occasion. The primary reason for this is that if it's not on the schedule, it doesn't get done. We outline and assign scenarios (and any other PDF-only content) roughly 6 or 7 months before it ever sees the light of day. If a scenario or a quest or an update to the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play isn't on the schedule at least that far ahead of time, it just doesn't get done. And it's not as easy as simply adding something to the schedule now that we hope to see in a few months. Whichever developer is concepting, outlining, assigning, and corresponding with the author(s) needs to have time now to do that. If we're (for example) in the ramp-up to PaizoCon, Gen Con, or another particularly taxing time on the department, then that staffer has more pressing deadlines to deal with than a new, additional project that wasn't accounted for when his workload for this week was being set months prior.

So even assuming we have the bandwidth right now to increase our output on the Pathfinder Society line (or any of our other product lines for that matter)—and I'm not saying we don't, just that it's an assessment that takes time and consideration to make and isn't necessarily one we'd make public—we'd need to plan time into the project schedule well in advance of even when the project would need to be assigned in order to ensure everything stays on track.

It's clear from this thread that we need to really look at what we're offering as part of the Pathfinder Society campaign both in terms of the campaign's own needs and in light of whatever our competition may have planned in the coming months or years. But there are myriad moving parts involved in making the sorts of sweeping product offering level decisions that it seems people want immediately. Does this mean we may change things to better serve the needs of the campaign? You bet. Does it mean any of those changes, whatever form they may take, will be revealed to anyone outside Paizo soon? Not likely. I'd wager that any change we made to the campaign would take 9 months on the low end before anyone even knew about it.

So even if we decided tomorrow that we feel confident we can reliably put out 3 scenarios a month without it throwing off any of our other tightly-scheduled product lines, we'd need to make sure that we had the internal resources available to do the front-end work on those additional products while still ensuring the current development, editing, layout, and other job duties didn't fall behind. So I ask for everyone asking for changes or enhancements to our campaign offerings to have patience, as an instant response to something on this or a similar thread wouldn't be seen for as much as a year or more.

The forthcoming Pathfinder Society Primer Player Companion will offer several new feats for characters with either background. Look for more on the transition from not-yet-commissioned field agent or Pathfinder-in-training to full-fledged member in a new Intro scenario before the end of the year.

Dustin, we understand that you dislike the decision to remove the bonus maps from the comics, but posting the same (or nearly the same) comment on multiple threads isn't helpful and simply clutters the boards. We prefer that users not double-post, and future posts across multiple threads will be removed. If you feel that a comment applies to multiple products or threads, it's generally best to start a new thread in the appropriate section of the boards (in this case the Licensed Products General Discussion forum addressing the issue of the maps' removal from the comics.

Does OGL permit putting faction missions in a place where anyone can see them?

Is their enough interest to create a site (or is it just me)?
What about a PDF or document of just FM by season/faction if necessary?
Would being able to read a FM ahead of time be too much of a spoiler?
Do the 'more open' FM of season 4 make this pointless?

The OGL applies only to content in our published products that we do not designate as product identity. In general, this is game stats, but not proper names or the text we use to tell stories or describe our world. The OGL would thus allow you to reproduce the mechanics behind a faction mission, but would not allow you to reproduce proper names (like Andoran, Sarenrae, Grand Lodge, or Paracountess Zarta Dralneen) nor reproduce the text of a faction handout verbatim (as that text is covered by copyright.

You can use the proper names from our setting under the terms of the Community Use Policy, and when combined with the OGL reproduce much more in non-commercial projects than you could with just one or the other license, but you still can't copy/paste our text into something someone else is getting for free.

In order to do what you're trying to do, the resulting website or digital document would need to be private and for personal use only. You could not distribute it in any way to other GMs or event organizers.

Luckily! Next season, we won't have faction handouts, and all previous years' handouts will be optional, thus negating the need for anything to be passed around the table by the GM in order to run the game. So I'd suggest saving your effort; in 2.5 months, it will have become obsolete anyway.

Here's some more evidence of complacency, from a post from a few minutes ago:

Mark Moreland wrote:

From a resource allocation standpoint, an adventure's position within a larger metaplot is less an issue than the number of words involved.

The campaign is in its fifth season. Mark, you have been telling us about this same development roadblock since you started at Paizo. Why is this barrier still a problem? Paizo has had a very long time to get better at producing Pathfinder Society scenarios, yet development is still a roadblock. That's complacency.

Development isn't a roadblock any more than editing is; it's simply part of the process. If it's being complacent to develop our products then it's complacent to have them laid out and edited. There is a limit to the number of words a person can develop (or write or edit or lay out) in a given amount of time. Having experience isn't going to change the fact that there are limits to how much we can do. Such limits are a reality of a publishing business, and affect not just the Pathfinder Society Scenarios line but also everything else we do. If you feel that we're complacent in this, then those are issues that need to be taken up with folks well above my paygrade.

On October 13, 2010 you posted this blog.

The second paragraph says the following:

Mark Moreland wrote:

Additionally, we will be releasing at least one low-level Pathfinder Society Scenario each month from now on, so you'll never run out of new material to run for seasoned and rookie Pathfinders at your local game day.

So, the confrontational part: If you had not abandoned that promise (of several others that were made in that blog), we likely would not be having this conversation. What happened?

Moreover, you titled that blog "We're Listening." Meaning, you've said what you said above before. Please put your money where your mouth is, this time.

Again, I apologize for calling you to the mat on this, but it is something I have felt strongly about for two-and-one-half years, now. I hope you understand...

I appreciate your candor, Drogon, and I don't take offense. That said, the post in question was made over 30 months ago, just over a month after I began working for Paizo and just a few weeks after Hyrum took over as Campaign Coordinator. A lot has changed since then, from Hyrum's departure from that role to some shifts in our overarching vision of the campaign. In the months following that post, we learned a lot about what people wanted and what we could reasonably handle within the campaign, and the result was that some of the "promises" made in that post had to be set by the wayside. One of the first lessons I learned was not to speak in absolutes and talk about things until they were finalized and totally, absolutely happening.

Thus, in hindsight (20-20 and all that), using the phrase "from now on" was a mistake. Mea culpa. I should have said, "for the foreseeable future." Ultimately, we released a new Tier 1–5 (or Tier 1, or Tier 1–7) scenario every month through the remainder of Season 2, through all of Season 3, and through August 2012, almost 2 full years after the blog in question. One of the unforeseen changes that took place in the campaign around that time (at the start of Season 4) was our shift toward a larger metaplot, which was in direct response to fan's asking for such. We felt that we could maintain the spirit of that original promise for a new low-level scenario each month while widening that definition to include both Tier 3–7 and Tier 1–5. Clearly our assumption that the existing Tier 1–5, Tier 1–7, and Tier 1 content as well as a new Tier 1–5 scenario every other month would be sufficient for event organizers was incorrect.

The result of releasing a Tier 1–5 scenario each month without an increase in our monthly output, however, would have changed the types of stories we could have told in Varisia, since many iconic locations simply aren't acceptable places for low-level PCs to go. We would have effectively lost 2 each of Tier 3–7, Tier 5–9, and Tier 7–11 scenarios over the course of the season, resulting in the forthcoming dwarf mini-arc, the runelord/Lissala season-long arc, and the ongoing Zarta/Blackros/Desimire plotline having less presence. We simply wouldn't have had the scenario slots available for each of these adventure tiers to do those stories justice.

Does any of that change the fact that, clearly, a Tier 3–7 scenario every other month isn't what the campaign needs? I guess not. But with 2 scenarios a month at present (and for the foreseeable future); with people responding well to the increased interrelatedness of the season's scenarios; with the fact that next year, the campaign is headed to the Worldwound, where low-level PCs simply won't survive? There's not an easy solution.

If there's any question about how we prioritize scenarios in the overall scheme of Pathfinder Society material, however, the fact that ancillary adventure content like quests and converted Season 0 material have been sidelined in order to get scenarios out regularly should indicate that it's our number-one priority for the campaign. We'd love to release more a month, which would allow us to both release a new Tier 1–5 scenario monthly as well as tell the higher-level stories that campaign participants are also asking for. But we're not there yet, and even if we decided today to do so, it likely wouldn't be for as long as a year before that change took effect.

So again, when I (or Mike, or John, or Erik, or whomever) says that "we're listening," it's because we are. And we want people to keep telling us what they want out of the campaign, even if it's something different than what we have planned in a given moment. It's also something that we could do better, in the sense that listening is different than responding, which gets us into trouble time and again when our words are used against us in later discussions. When we go radio-silent, the community asks us to communicate more. When we communicate, however, especially if we do so in response to pressure instead of when we're truly ready to do so, it invariably results in bad feelings.

And that's my really, really long way of saying that I will do just what you've asked me to do: I'll put my money where my mouth is. I'm listening, even if I say less.

Out of curiosity, how much do folks asking for more Pathfinder Society Scenarios utilize other sanctioned adventures such as Pathfinder Modules and Pathfinder Adventure Paths?

Tamago wrote:

One possible solution would be to produce a few more (say, three per month), but also have more of them be "one-shot" adventures that don't really tie into the overarching plot of the season.

This is an interesting idea. I don't know how much load this would take off the writers and developers, or what the appetite from the players would be for this. I think that I'd quite enjoy the occasional side-job for my PFS characters.

From a resource allocation standpoint, an adventure's position within a larger metaplot is less an issue than the number of words involved. It takes a little bit more time on the front end to ensure that a metaplot-heavy adventure picks up the necessary dangling threads and leaves the right ones hanging at the end, but after the author's written the adventure with those plot elements in mind, development, layout, and editing for the adventure are pretty much the same as anything else.

As Mike's indicated, we're aware that people would like more Pathfinder Society content (and as a participant in the campaign myself, I would too). Before we'd commit to such, however, we'd need to ensure that we aren't setting ourselves up for failure. This means a lot of behind-the-scenes meetings here at Paizo about how much our already busy staff can handle, what the budget can handle in terms of adding 50% or more to our annual production costs, and other business concerns. And these things all take time from when we come up with an idea or make a decision to when they get enacted, announced, and then released into the wild. All this is to say that we're listening, but if we hold our cards close to our chests or you don't see anything coming from your feedback, it doesn't mean we aren't hearing you or considering how to continually improve the campaign, both for our benefit as a company and for the benefit of the tens of thousands of players who participate in the campaign on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis.

Michael Brock wrote:

We have offerings on the 2013/2014 schedule that will replace First Steps. 15 hours to play through all three parts of First Steps is a bit much to ask of a brand new player. So, we have some ideas with how to improve on those introductory experiences that we learned from First Steps.

Ah. That sounds better. I'd gotten the impression it was going away without a similar replacement.

John and I have looked long and hard at the development schedule and the overall scenario plan for Season 5 to determine when we can fit it in, and currently, we're planning on having a new introductory scenario out by the end of 2013. That's subject to change, of course, but the current goal is to have one out and in-play by holiday season. We feel it's important to get one out as soon in the Season as possible.

I imagine that window is a result of an art order that said "a guy is casting a spell in a dungeon" and the artist assumed that meant a medieval dungeon rather than an underground series of windowless chambers made of stone.

The fact that Paizo was generous enough to take us to the movie is laudable all on its own, but that they did so during the workday is even more amazing, as it meant we didn't have to sacrifice any personal time with our families to enjoy the benefits of said generosity. Thanks again, Paizo management team!

Thanks for alerting us that Liz is out of the office. We'll try to get her back from vacation right away...Wait, is that not what you meant?

Ruins of Bonekeep levels 3 and 4 are planned to be Tier 5–9, as they're lower in the dungeon and therefor more dangerous.

Interesting. So if a party blindly stumbles into a trapped door and many of them die (and recover) from some BOOM! effect, they get credit for encountering and OVERCOMING the trap. However, if a party decides to use dim door or shape stone or whatever to pass through a section of wall prior to encountering the trap, technically (and unknowingly) they did not encounter it, so did not overcome it, therefore, no XP. Hmmmm...

No. If you use character resources to get past a trapped door without triggering the trap (and without even knowing about it) you've still overcome the challenge. If you, however, never turn left at the fork in the hallway and thus never find the trapped chest at the dead end down that hall, you didn't bypass the trap, you simply never encountered it.

The press release indicates that it will contain goblin-centric game content.

A sprung trap is considered overcome, whether the target lives or dies. A disabled trap is considered overcome. A trap that you discover and avoid by walking around it or whatever is considered overcome. If you never open the trapped door because you just never went there, the trap is simply not encountered and is therefor not overcome.

In general, a reroll can only be used before the results of the original roll have been determined. Since the DC of a Day Job isn't variable (or rather isn't a secret), using a reroll on a Day Job is sort of skirting the edge of how that mechanic is intended to work. If it were possible to fail a Day Job check by not hitting an undisclosed DC on a given attempt, then a reroll would be appropriate, but that's not how the Day Job mechanic works.

I've been trying to get a good answer to this, but I haven't really gotten one that makes any sense to me.

Every boon or magic item I've ever pulled at a promo/perk at, say, GenCon, has been pre-signed by an event GM. That signature wasn't tied to the "attachment to the character" it was just pre-signed.

The elixir boon is, obviously, NOT pre-signed.

Paizo folks tell me via e-mail that "The GM signs the boon when you attach it to your character," which... OK, but then why are all the GenCon boons pre-signed? Shouldn't they ALSO be signed when they're attached to the character?

Does anyone have some experience with this, who could perhaps explain this discrepancy to me?

As the member of the Paizo staff who answered your query both when you addressed it to Goblinworks and to Paizo's customer service, I'll do my best.

First, we have never, to date, issued a pre-signed digital asset to anyone via any venue. We have no plans to start distributing Chronicle sheets in that manner.

Second, this Chronicle sheet involves a random die roll or other variables that need to be adjudicated by a GM to ensure they're handled correctly. When you get access to a new race via a convention boon or gain a new language or bonus to hit, that's about as straightforward as a boon can be. In this case, a player can add a simple template to a character 1 time OR roll randomly to get a special permanent mutation OR choose a permanent mutation when others utilize the same boon simultaneously. To prevent someone from just applying a preselected boon to a character without a GM being there to verify that, yes, in fact two people did use the Chronicle sheet at the same time, a GM must be present to verify that the Chronicle has been properly administered to the character in question.

I hope that's clearer than past clarifications on why this Chronicle sheet contains no signature.

Are there plans to eventual publish the Ruins of Bonekeep megadungeon and the "new adventures never before offered for Beginner Box characters of 3rd level"?

We do not have any plans to announce at this time. Until such time as we do, Gen Con and other large conventions will be the only places you can play Ruins of Bonekeep.

Looks like Gen Con got first dibs on showing the world Season 5 Pathfinder Society Logo.

We released the logo through Gen Con, and always intended for them to show it first. We'll have it up on the blog soon so that it's covered officially under the Community Use Policy for others to use.

Does Paizo triple its output so that each difficulty setting has the same number of scenarios we currently have?

No. Please, for the love of all that is holy in the Great Beyond, NO!

I wonder how army stats will handle going against character stats. Like, if one PC was going against an army, how would Army HP and such handle that?

The character would be treated as a Fine army containing one creature (like the Tarrasque in the example) and would get its own statblock in army format.

The cover image (and the corresponding card within the set) are attributed to Aurelien Hubert.

Yes. And you apply it to a specific character before rolling or using the advanced simple template option.

Maybe yellow. Even if you choose that mutation, you still have to roll randomly to determine a color.

So, I figure the boon is 1/player and not 1/character right?

The last sentence before the table indicates that it is 1/player, so yes.

Sometimes artists interpret a piece of reference art not as "here's what hobgoblins look like" but rather "this is the hobgoblin Merisiel is sneaking up on." Any similarity between Gomwai and the hobgoblin in this picture are purely coincidental.

I may have to see if I can get these boons on all 13 of my PCs by getting them all into season 4 scenarios by the end of the summer. :)

By the end of July. Season 5 starts at Gen Con.

As a reminder, we've previously stated that characters who play at least one Season 4 scenario before the conclusion of Season 4 will be eligible to receive a boon specifically tailored to the character's faction, reflecting the faction's degree of success in attaining its season-long goals. If a player can both qualify for this special boon coming in a few months and help us defeat the dastardly pirates who are holding the Skull & Shackles Chronicle sheets hostage, then that's two birds with one stone!