Mikaze's page

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On account of this meeting looking more and more inevitable for my group's run through Escape from Old Korvosa.

Yeah I kind of dig the font. I certainly wouldn't want to see it become a standard, but I would like it on certain modules.

Kudos to the artist. Using "human" teeth makes the thing more unsettling.

It also seems to be suffering from the gum disease known as Gingivitis!

Mikaze wrote:

I wanna punch a Razmir priest in the face. This can't come soon enough.

Wouldn't you hurt your hand doing that? They all wear iron masks.

Awesome cover. Really dig the designs on the adventurer and the naga.

Man, adventurer types just can't not pry large rubies from mean-looking idols, huh?

Only one real complaint. It dropped the package it was sent in on my foot and it broke my toe. I'm not kidding. I hate pdf copies of things, but this book is just down right toe unfriendly.

S.

6) Be careful of Games Workshop and the like where you have to order X amount of things to get Y amount of something else.

Keep us posted man.

Yeah, that bears repeating:

Pathfinder adventures don't shy away from mature themes, but they're also more mature about handling them than many. When they're present, they work because they fit in with the setting and themes of the adventure; it's never gratuitous.

...

Save for one of the items you have to get in Sins of the Saviors.(sorry)

but I'd be careful of Hook Mountain Massacre and Sins of the Saviours.

Sorry, flashbacks to what was involved in those two volumes and imagining the acrobatics needed to gloss them over just hit me hard. Yeah, I seriously doubt you want the little ones flipping through either of those two volumes.

As said before, Lamashtu is going to bring some issues to the table that you might want to be certain everyone would be comfortable with. As for how "clean" the art is in Burnt Offerings and Skinsaw Murders, I can't remember much beyond some gruesome bits for Skinsaw and Xaneesha's Madonna top.

That thing was awkward.

You know, Legacy of Fire is probably the most "kid friendly" of the APs out right now. It's the least dark, little in the way of gruesomeness that I can remember off hand, and the sexual themes have fewer kinky flare-ups as opposed to RotRL(HAHAHHAHAHA SINS OF THE SAVIORS!), Curse of the Crimson Throne(one god in particular's presense automatically disqualifies it from ever being read to the kids or grandma), and Second Darkness(drow. Just...drow).

Mikaze wrote:

dudes

Dude, David Bowie? Come on.

It should be noted that dudes dig rock stars too.

Funny thing. In the text of the module, the harpy is described as being kinda unnappealing and nasty.... but...

But when I saw her picture the first thing popping into my head was, "Wow. I'd totally hit that. As long as she didn't rip me apart." Frankly, she's kind of really damn gorgeous in the pics, and her raptorish bits just make her look exotic, not freaky.

It does turn up a lot though; art for female monsters typically leaning towards attractive despite however they may be described in the text. The medusa from the 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual comes to mind.

It goes in the opposite direction every now and then too.

Convince me to play a bard!

I've been saying it like SKR but with a long "e" instead of "eye".

I also pronounce Irori "ih-ROH-ree" and Fandalandarra as "STUK-up ETH-no-sehn-trik @#$%@". How far off am I on those?

Having said that, the idea that the collective authors of Armies of the Abyss, Hordes of the Abyss, and a little RPGA gem called "River of Blood" are toning down the game because of satanic panic is preposterous.

But seriously, between all the details on religious rituals for Lamashtu and FREAKING ZON-KUTHON you've hit a good balance one what to and what not to present. You haven't sanitized sword and sorcery, and you also haven't slipped into excess like say, Carcosa.

I can't believe we didn't even get a "THOSE AREN'T PILLOWS!" scenario out of this.

Tell me you guys at least learned a heartwarming life lesson about reaching out to others on your way home.

I am lost at these things, please help.

How do you make the spoiler boxes in the posts and also how do you add links?

Thanks

They all generally work like "[word]Stuff[/word]" or "[word="Words"]Stuff[/word]".

Gentlemen.

A modicum of decorum and calm, please.

DarkWhite wrote:

The only reason I could see justifyiing +2 to one ability for Half-orcs, is if Paizo revised full-blood orcs from +4 Str to +2 Str to bring it more in line with +2 +2 -2 ability standard for player races.

You know, that's damn fine point to make. We don't know what Pathfinder RPG orcs are going to look like unlike elves and humans. They might very well be a bit different from what people know from 3.5.

Should be interesting to see.

IIRC, the orcs in the journals were only about as ugly as WotC's 3.x half-orcs. Those in CMR were actually better looking!

And the half-orcs seen so far range from ugly-but-almost-human(whatsisname from Darkmoon Vale), orc-handsome(racial line-ups), to cute(Campaign Setting).

What're the races?

The elf's voice actor makes me LOLOLOLOLOL to this day.

I strongly support looking into a basic set for new gamers.

But I also beg Paizo not to throw in audio CD's like TSR did for one of the later starter boxes(and the Glantri box). Oh MAN if you could have heard the acting in those...

JUST got it. Won't have time to fully digest it for a while yet, but I will say this:

The flaws are nice.

I think I'm really going to like professions.

Whoever did the art for those splash pages, such as pages 5 and 172, Adamant needs to hold onto him/her. Seriously. I have more mostly positive stuff to say about the art, but time being time...

I keep getting this error when I try and download some books. I realize this is probably going to be fixed when everyone gets back ... but I hadn't seen anything on it.

Don't refresh the page with your browser. Give it about a minute and then click the "check back in a minute, mate" link for that item. It will probably take several tries. Don't panic if when you finally get the link up to personalize it it goes back to saying it's down, just keep trying(but don't do it in rapid succession).

Chill and relax to some music, bring up a flash game, open a pdf you already have, it makes the wait easier. Took me quite a while to get mine today.

Good stuff. I'm actually going to get to play in this one!

There's an error in the intro to the campaign traits section though. It cuts off right after "a man named..." There wasn't any stylized cut-off or fake bloodstains on that portion of the page, so I don't think it's one of those neat little interrupted-while-writing things at work. ;)

We went through this with some of the first expansions of M:tG. Diamond would tell a different story to all their customers in my town, and no one would get the number they ordered.

Sorry...I've got a lot of pent up rage against that distributor for a lot of reasons.

The discussion of marriage came up and the first god I thought of was Erastil, and I can honestly see him going either way with this. He might have even approved of it(or disapproved) at one time and later came around to another way of thinking, much like how he became less "bloody" over the millenia.

But like a couple of the others, I think it will be mostly a cultural thing. I can kind of see rationalizing it as working in Taldor, but a part of me thinks they would reject it due to possibly bearing similarities to marriage arrangements in Qadira.

Now wife-and-a-mistress arrangements on the other hand, especially with so much of the nobility claiming royal blood, being decadent to begin with, and reminding me of pre-revolution France even if it wasn't meant to...I can easily see that option being socially acceptable or even expected.

I'm reminded of ol' King Louis XV, Queen Marie Leszczyńska, and Madame de Pompadour.

Sadly I can't claim that it's because I'm that learned when it comes to French history.

As for which countries polygamy is present...

Qadira and Vudra/Jalmeray are definites. Katapesh is anything-goes land.

Osirion...I'm not sure. As much as I love me some Ancient Egypt, I can't recall offhand whether multiple marriages happened frequently or not.

Mwangi Expanse and Mammoth Lords, I'd say it's definitely there, but it's going to vary from tribe to tribe. Same for Sargava, whoever is left in the Sodden Lands, and whoever is left in the WorldwoHAHAHA who am I kidding? They've got more important problems to keep them busy there.

I can see it popping up in some isolated rural communities in Varisia and Andoran. I don't see it happening with the Shoanti for some reason.

In the River Kingdoms, I see it differing from kingdom to kingdom, and probably changing with the rise and fall of whoever holds power this year.

Brevoy, no clue. I just realized that I need to read up on them.

Damn. Here's hoping that was an odd duck, or that there's only one other book sharing that one's problem.

Aren't RPGNow and DriveThruRPG joined at the hip? I never had any issues at DriveThru. Never shopped at RPGNow...

I thought 2E won

I'm glad this is being mentioned, because when I started playing D&D a few years ago, I certainly didn't know. It'd be excellent if there is a writeup in the foreword of the book to explain this to new players, and old players alike.

Any bets on the Iconic Shadow Dancer being related to a certain cute but deadly Rogue?

(even for hack'n slah fans, as the magic items generator "Diablo-style" is a nice touch).

I'm curious about the chase rules. I love chases. I love chases that are also fights.

My players stay out:

I have to wonder if there's a drawback that essentially dares the GM to mess with you. Because I have a nasty habit of taking those in other systems.

Grim Servant of Death + Veteran of the Weird West + Dynamite = GOOD TIMES.

I ain't got time to make it.

I do know someone heading there though. He intended to buy a bunch of copies of Pathfinder Core for our group, but he might not be able to buy as many as he hoped.

tick tock

Get some sleep! Big day tomorr-today!

I need you folks to be up and at 'em when my connection at Gencon tries to get my book signed!

...uh...I mean it's not healthy! Yeah, that's it!

IIRC, it was his first full movie. He actually got his start working on episodes of the Lupin III tv series. It's a fun movie, though it does help a bit if you're at least a little familiar with Lupin III's cast.

Back on-topic though: Yes, looking forward to Ponyo especially after hearing about that new record he set for himself on animation frames.

There's got to be other admirers here of Hayao Miyazaki's work...

Tome of Horror and Advanced Bestiary are both crazy awesome.

Here's how crazy awesome they are:

Tome of Horrors has the Wolf-In-Sheep's-Clothing.

Does your 3.5 Monster Manual have the Wolf-In-Sheep's-Clothing? NO. GET OUT OF MY OFFICE WITH THAT NOISE.

So you got your Wolf-In-Sheep's-Clothing. Advanced Bestiary has templates that will SET IT ON FIRE.

YOU HAVE A WOLF-IN-SHEEP'S-CLOTHING AND IT IS ON FIRE. YOUR CAMPAIGN IS RICHER FOR IT.

Buy Tome of Horrors and Advanced Bestiary today. You'll be glad you did.

(I've never actually combined the two products, but now I think I'm going to have to see just how insane(and cool) things can get)

Mikaze wrote:

yoda8myhead wrote:

Yes, it was a full preview of the Bestiary. Looks awesome! Wish I could have given it a closer look but everyone wanted some time with it.

QUICK YODA BEFORE THEY SILENCE YOU:

Was the art used for the marilith the badass example shown in ** spoiler omitted **

There was a lot of great art in the book and I don't recall specifics. Nor do I remember if the marilith was one of the pages I got to glance at before it moved into someone else's hands.

If your goal is to introduce the game to new players, wouldn't it be better to write a low level adventure that serves as an introduction to the gameplay, and has all the rules relevant to the adventure integrated into it as part of the narrative?

(I missed out on that beginner adventure, but it always makes me smile to see how many gamers still have a hate on for Bargle)

joela wrote:

Everyone!

Per Vic Wertz, Technical Director of Paizo:

From where I sit, it's August 13, the official release date of the Pathfinder RPG. And as a co-owner of Paizo Publishing and someone with a significant role in what some refer to as "the edition wars," I have an announcement to make:

The Edition Wars are over, and we have all won.

Full Post

My take? Yup ;-)

+1

All edition wars(and console wars(and cola wars)) do is make me irritated with the warriors. There's plenty of game to go around.

The sentiment in the blog is certainly one I can get behind.(or rather, have been behind)

Shadow of the Colossus encounters would indeed be awesome. I'm running something like it on Sunday. We'll see how it goes.

Mikaze wrote:

One possibility is the idea of tiefling breeding programs, from which the most promising individuals are drafted into a special branch of the Hellknights or Cheliax's military force, either because their nature brings certain abilities to the table or for PR.

You're talking about a type of eugenics program for tieflings, correct? Intriguing. First of all, can they even breed true?

Tieflings can have kids just as easily as normal humans, barring unusual features that might make it more difficult(such as not having any sexual organs, like the guy from Cityscape).

The trick was that the "tiefling factor" could be downright unpredictable. It could skip a generation, or several, and go hidden for a long time before resurfacing. You couldn't really depend on a tiefling child of another tiefling having the same features as his parent.(one might make an argument that this would be less true of devil-tainted tieflings than it would for demon-tainted ones) Certainly a Chelaxian eugenics program would have magic and other elements to help things along and ensure that the "taint" takes root.

Golarion might have a different take on that though. I haven't gotten my #25 yet, so I'm in the dark on that one.

edit-Winged half-fiend centaur Hellknight leading a squadron of winged tieflings, brimstone gargoyles, and imps as support. Mmmmm.

Yes, it was a full preview of the Bestiary. Looks awesome! Wish I could have given it a closer look but everyone wanted some time with it.

Was the art used for the marilith the badass example shown in

Paging Mongoose.

I gotta say, I do love Reaper.

I hope this deal with Reaper lets us see some specific cultural representations. Varisian harrowers, Shoanti barbarians, Osiriani khopeshmen, Vudrani monks, etc.

I'm not a fan of using the idea freely, but it does open up the awesome possibility of a paladin trying to redeem his own god, whatever that would mean for one's setting.

Now I'm thinking of Small Gods...

Nice callback. ;)

And I agree.