Olaf the Stout's page

We play 3.5E rules, but we've decided to use the Pathfinder Channel Energy rules, instead of the Turn Undead rules for the campaign.

I've never really liked the 3.5E Turn Undead rules. Having to look up 2 tables to figure out the result was always a bit unwieldy. On top of that the result was generally totally ineffectual (turn attempt fails) or auto-win (destroyed or fleeing/cowering while the rest of the party pepper the undead with ranged attacks).

The Channel Energy rules seems like a nice middle ground, as well as a way for the Cleric to heal up multiple PC's in combat if he wants to use his ability for healing instead.

Olaf the Stout

Hey guys. I'm still tracking this thread, so keep it coming. We haven't started playing yet, but will do so in about a month. I'm giving myself plenty of prep time so that I can read through all of the adventures first so that continuity issues or plot holes don't come up, foreshadowing can be done in advance and weak plot hooks replaced with stronger ones.

As it is, I'll probably be doing what several other DM's have done and actually start the campaign with Mad God's Key and then go on to the Whispering Cairn from that adventure. Mad God's Key involves Vecna cultists, so it meshes in without too much trouble. I plan on the book from Mad God's Key to have some information related to Kyuss in it.

Oh, and wraithstrike, I'll be allowing the PC's access to the splatbooks, but I'll be doing the exact same thing I did for the Shackled City AP and make all of my rolls in the open (apart from rolls that should be kept hidden like Search, Hide, etc.). So there will be no fudging either way on my part.

I had expected lots of player deaths in the Shackled City AP, after being told it was a real meatgrinder. In the end I think my group had maybe 5 deaths for the entire campaign, and 2 of those came in the combat against the Dracolich, where the PC's totally got their butts handed to the the first time around. The second time they faced the Dracolich they were much better prepared and wiped the floor with him.

I do have 5 players (and there was as NPC in the Shackled City campaign, so effectively 6 for that) so it should make things a little easier for them.

Olaf the Stout

The players will have access to just about all of the WotC splatbooks, so I expect their characters to be a bit stronger than characters made using only the PHB.

I had expected Shackled City to be a meat grinder, and warned my players accordingly. However, there was only about 5 or 6 PC deaths in the whole Shackled City campaign and a few of those could have been avoided if the players were a little more careful. On a couple of occasions the party was very close to a TPK.

In general though they breezed through a lot of the encounters, including several that I expected to be quite a challenge. I rolled all my dice in the open last campaign, so there was no helping out from me in that regard. There were 5 PC's and 1 NPC in the group, which definitely made things easier for them. I will be dropping the NPC for the AoW campaign (no one wanted to play a Cleric last campaign).

I'm aware of the heavy undead nature of the campaign and I have told the players to expect a lot of undead. I will be putting the item that lets Rogues sneak attack undead into the game so that player isn't made to feel useless in combat most of the time.

Olaf the Stout

After 3 years of play my group finally completed the Shackled City AP a week or so ago. I gave them a few different options and it looks like Age of Worms will be the next campaign we play.

In order to make this the best game possible I plan on taking my time to really prep beforehand. I'm going to read through all of the adventures and the Age of Worms Overload document.

For those that have played or run the campaign before are there any problems that need to be fixed?

Are there any points in the plot that are a bit disjointed and could be improved upon?

Do any of the main bad guys or NPC's need to be foreshadowed better in earlier adventures so that they don't seem to appear out of nowhere when the PC's finally encounter them?

Thanks to a lot of help from other DM's on the Shackled City board, I made a number of changes to the campaign that improved the game a whole heap. This included removing some of the minor bad guys, foreshadowing many of the NPC's better, adding in basically 2 new adventures, creating my own final adventure and changing the ending of the campaign considerably.

So, given that, I'm not afraid of putting a lot of work into the game to make it a better overall experience for my players. At the same time, if others have already gone before me and done the work, I'm not too proud to "borrow" heavily from it! :-D

Olaf the Stout

I wouldn't go with SCAP for 12 year olds. Check with their parents first, but I'd probably run something a little more PG-13.

I know the parents are playing in the game with them, but I think a game centering around cultists opening a portal to hell is too mature for a couple of 12 year olds playing their first D&D game.

On top of that, the SCAP campaign is pretty full on. A shorter campaign might be better to allow them to find their feet, before moving on to a longer campaign.

Olaf the Stout

Hi all,

After 3 years of play my Shackled City campaign is coming to an end. In preparation for my next campaign I'm putting together a list of various options for my players to look at to help decide what they want to play next.

I got the ST adventures when they first came out, but haven't really read them. I'm just after a general overview of the campaign, the types of adventures (i.e. dungeon crawls, travel, urban) and what monsters the PC's will face off against.

Here is an example of the sort of thing that I am looking for.

Shackled City AP

Summary: The campaign is largely set in and around Cauldron, a city built in the mouth of a dormant volcano (which totally won't erupt at some point during the campaign! :-D). An evil organisation is trying to open a gate to a plane of Hell and it is up to the PC's to try and stop them
Levels: 1-20
Adventure Types: A mix of dungeon, city and planar adventures, as well as a number of roleplaying encounters. Relatively light on wilderness adventures.
Creatures Likely To Encounter: Demons and dragons feature prominently. Undead, orcs, half-orcs, kuo-toa, dark creepers and various humanoid NPC’s are also encountered.

I've had a look around here on the boards and online but I haven't been able to find much on what types of adventures to expect other than dungeon crawls and what creatures besides undead. So any help would be greatly appreciated.

Olaf the Stout

Hi all,

After 3 years of play my Shackled City campaign is coming to an end. In preparation for my next campaign I'm putting together a list of various options for my players to look at to help decide what they want to play next.

I have the AoW adventures but haven't really looked at them in years. I'm just after a general overview of the campaign, the types of adventures (i.e. dungeon crawls, travel, urban) and what monsters the PC's will face off against.

Here is an example of the sort of thing that I am looking for.

Shackled City AP

Summary: The campaign is largely set in and around Cauldron, a city built in the mouth of a dormant volcano (which totally won't erupt at some point during the campaign! :-D). An evil organisation is trying to open a gate to a plane of Hell and it is up to the PC's to try and stop them
Levels: 1-20
Adventure Types: A mix of dungeon, city and planar adventures, as well as a number of roleplaying encounters. Relatively light on wilderness adventures.
Creatures Likely To Encounter: Demons and dragons feature prominently. Undead, orcs, half-orcs, kuo-toa, dark creepers and various humanoid NPC’s are also encountered.

I've had a look around here on the boards and online but I haven't been able to find much on what types of adventures to expect other than dungeon crawls and what creatures besides undead. So any help would be greatly appreciated.

Olaf the Stout

Ok, I adapted your Haunted Village adventure to Shatterhorn (just easier as I have maps that way). I stripped a lot of the encounters out of Shatterhorn to keep things moving plot-wise. Last session ended with the PC's entering the dream portal to see Embril with Nidrama.

Here is where I plan on going with it:

The PC's are attacked by various dream creatures and then Embril (probably in conjunction with some demons). After defeating Embril and rescuing Nidrama there will be some plot exposition.

From there Nidrama will give some plot exposition and the party will rest (they will need to by this point) and have Haunted Dream 10.

Then, based on what they find out from the dream and Nidrama, they will plane shift to Carceri in order to try and stop the madness Adimarchus is sending out.

Once on Carceri they will encounter the huge Vhalantru from Asylum that will be possessed by Adimarchus. (In my campaign Vhalantru's body teleported away soon after he was killed in his lair. I think my players will love the opportunity to face off against a suped-up version of him.)

This will give Nidrama the idea to find Adimarchus through his dreams/nightmares. After defeating Vhalantru, one of the PC's (probably the one with the Smoking Eye) will need to allow themselves to be possessed by Adimarchus. That possessed PC will then be used to allow the party to dream travel to Adimarchus' nightmare realm where they will face a series of challenges.

I'm not really sure about this bit, but I had the idea of the PC's working through the 5 stages of grief. Once these stages are overcome the PC's will then find themselves in Skullrot in front of Adimarchus

5 Stages/Challenges:

1. Shock/Disbelief/Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining/Guilt
4. Depression
5. Acceptance/Hope

Ideas for each stage/challenge:

[u]1. Shock/Disbelief/Denial[/u]

The PC's will head down a totally non-descript corridor, face some creature (possibly Adimarchus himself), fight and defeat it before continuing on down the corridor. The fights will either be exactly the same (or possibly get more difficult each time). In any case it will look like exactly the same creature every time.

In order to move past this challenge the PC's need to disbelieve that it is real.

[u]2. Anger[/u]

A relatively simple challenge in concept, (but still difficult to overcome! :-D)

The PC's must defeat Adimarchus' inner demon (Adimarchus' demon stats used) who has captured and is torturing his inner angel. Although defeated, he can never be completely killed and taunts the PC's that will return over time to regain control once again.

[u]3. Bargaining/Guilt[/u]

Not sure. Ideas needed.

[u]4. Depression[/u]

Not sure. Ideas needed.

[u]5. Acceptance/Hope[/u]

Not sure. Maybe they need to somehow convince Adimarchus that all is not lost, that his inner angel can once again regain control of his body.

Upon overcoming the final challenge the PC's will find themselves in Skullrot. There they must defeat Dark Myrkul. After doing that they can release Adimarchus' from his cage but he will remain unresponsive. His eyes will be open but staring blankly ahead.

Nidrama speaking and embracing him will get some positive responses but won't break him out from wherever he is. Only placing the Elypsium tulip he gave her* will bring his mind back.

I'm thinking the campaign will end with either Adimarchus and Nidrama trying to track down Anthux or simply letting it go and choosing to live out their lives together in the mortal realms.

*After serving her penalty for being with someone greater than her station, Nidrama returned to where she and Adimarchus were found out and arrested by the other angels. It was there she found the crushed tulip still laying on the ground. She has carried it with her since that time as a reminder and considers it her most valuable possession.

Olaf the Stout

I would jump directly to the last adventure after 13 cages. gives you two advantages. First, the higher power level makes the adventure a lot more challenging for your players. Second, you get to skip the rather boring grind that is Shatterhorn.

I ended up running a cut down version of Shatterhorn, with some changes to take into account the fact that I'm using delvesdeep's alternate ending to the AP.

To avoid bogging the ending down, I stripped out any encounters with NPC's that the players haven't already encountered yet. So the encounter with the elves and the black egg were removed, as were the Yuan-ti encounters. The Will o' Wisps and the Half-Orc Barbarians were removed from the outside encounter and replaced with further advanced versions of Aushunna, Nabthatoron and a couple of other NPC's that my party had encountered earlier in the campaign.

Bringing Aushunna and Nabby made for an awesome encounter. Both these demons absolutely owned the PC's when they faced them earlier in the campaign (twice in the case of Nabby) so their return allowed the PC's a chance at revenge. The look on the players faces when I put the minis down on the battlemat was worth the price of admission alone! :-)

The combat ended with the demons and NPC's teleporting away badly hurt but alive, so they are somewhere out in the world still. However the combat still gave the PC's a little bit of closure. I think it will make for a nice narrated epilogue to the campaign where, with the Cagewrights defeated, they can decide if the want to hunt down these demons.

All up Shatterhorn took about 9-10 hours of game time to get through. Using delvesdeep's alternate version, the only bit left for the PC's to do is defeat Embril in the dream world and rescue Nidrama. From there they will go to Carceri, enter Adimarchus' nightmare realm, face a few challenges and then face off against Anthux to rescue Adimarchus end the campaign.

Olaf the Stout

I love the current APs, but love the 10-12 issue ones that take you to 20-21.. I would love to see something from Paizo that is as world spanning and EPIC as Age of Worms or even Savage Tide...I'm just finishing up as a player in Rise of the Runelords, and it has been cool..but I wish I got to explore levels above 13, which is where my Wizard will be at the end...In the AoW game I ran, they were 21 and 22 by the end...Shackled City will probably have them at 19-20 it looks like...

A higher level AP would be great... Eric, Tito Leati, James, Nic Logue, Richard Pett.and I'm sure I'm missing several others (at work while writing this) could all contribute to make it an All-Star event...maybe to celebrate and anniversary of the first AP...or a company anniversary...who's with me??

My group has just finished "Thirteen Cages", the 10th adventure in the SCAP, and are around 16th level. Personally I have found running a high level game like this a lot less fun than I thought.

I love that a lot of the mysteries of the plot have finally been revealed and the players are able to connect the dots of why things happened earlier in the campaign.

I haven't enjoyed running the high level encounters. My players, having played their characters for over 2 years now, have gotten their PC's to be pretty damn good at what they do.

Conversely, I'm struggling to keep my head above water trying to competently run a combat and make good tactical decisions for high level spellcasters or monsters with a heap of different rules and abilities that I play for just one encounter.

If myself and the players weren't loving the actual storyline like we are then we probably would have ended the campaign a couple of months ago (or now, with the completion of Thirteen Cages).

So I am enjoying the fact that the next AP I run will likely only take the players to level 16 or thereabouts.

Olaf the Stout

The Cauldron Chronicle issues?

Just the basic text?

Olaf the Stout

Olaf the Stout wrote:

Great way to drop plot hooks and rumours right into the campaign DelvesDeep. Love it.

Olaf the Stout

Yes. It was the one big element that annoyed me about the campaign. Lack of foreshadowing events and especially prominant NPC's.

I used issues of the Cauldron Chronicle as a handout through the campaign. I think there is about 8 issues, but I haven't written one for quite some time as non-game life got really busy.

In any case, I found them another great addition to forshadow and insert plot hooks and rumours. My players loved them as well.

It is definitely something I would recommend to others and plan to use something similar in future campaigns I run.

Olaf the Stout

Great way to drop plot hooks and rumours right into the campaign DelvesDeep. Love it.

Olaf the Stout

Thanks DD. I think that is basically what I have already from the various threads you have posted. I'll see if I can work it up a little bit more.

Embril will definitely maintain her prominence in there. One of the PC's took a bit of a liking to her at the Demonskar Ball so that will add a bit of spice to the encounter.

I like the hook coming from the dreams. I have used your dreams as is and both myself and the players have definitely enjoyed them. It helped a lot with the Kaurophon / Occipitus part of the AP. Without the dreams Kaurophon appearing and whisking the PC's off to another plane seems a bit odd. The dreams helped the PC's to trust that they were heading along the right path at least.

I also like how what seems quite abstract to begin with starts to make a lot more sense as the campaign progresses. You get a lot of "AH HA!" moments as the players start to piece together things and connect the dots.

Olaf the Stout

It's funny, my party found the secret door to Jzadirune right at the start, but didn't find the second one to the level below.

In the end the elevator was the very last room they explored in Jzadirune and it took multiple 4 hour sessions to get through it! :-D

Everyone enjoyed themselves though, which was the main thing. The party of 5 PC's didn't include a Rogue so it was definitely a challenge finding ways to avoid traps or minimise their damage.

Olaf the Stout

High Olaf. No I haven't run it yet but I have a decent outline for the adventure I will be using. I'll post it up here in a few hours.

Awesome, thanks!

Olaf the Stout

Out of interest, for those that have run them, are they all roughly the same length to run?

I would have thought that AoW and ST would be longer campaigns since they run from 1-20, but I have only run Shackled City out of all the AP's, so I don't have any other points of comparison.

We play fortnightly and I'm thinking a slightly shorter AP may be a better option if there is a toss up between a few options.

Olaf the Stout

After 3 years of playing my group has entered the Fiery Sanctum and will likely halt the gate ritual in the next session or so.

At that point I would prefer to go with the alternate ending that delvesdeep proposed, with the PC's going to the Haunted Village, entering Adimarchus' mind, etc.

The only problem is that I just have the rough outline that I was able to find on these boards.

delvesdeep, I see that you are still around the traps. Have you now run this "adventure" of the AP? Do you have any more detailed notes that you might be able to share, or did you come up with it on the fly?

Any help here would be appreciated as I'd really like to end this campaign on a high note.

Olaf the Stout

That's a good start. Thanks!

I may need to fill it out with a bit more meta-game stuff like what type of setting (dungeon, urban, wilderness) and what types of creatures you are likely to face.

Does anyone know if that information is summarised for the various AP's anywhere?

Olaf the Stout

What does 15 point buy in Pathfinder equate to in 3.5E rules?

Olaf the Stout

After over 3 years of fortnighly sessions, my group is coming to the end of the Shackled City AP. As such, I have started looking ay what to run next for the group.

In addition to Dungeon Magazine, Necromancer Games, Goodman Games and Malhavoc Press adventures, I have the following Paizo AP's available as options:

Age of Worms AP
Savage Tide AP
Rise of the Runelords AP
Legacy of Fire AP
Serpent's Skull AP

What I am looking for is summaries of each AP that I can give to my players so that they can get a general idea of what the AP's are about. Does anybody know if such a beast exists?

I know that there are 2-page campaign summaries in each of the AP's but that is probably too detailed for what I am after. Ideally I want something which summarizes the campaign in a couple of paragraphs. It doesn't have to be totally spoiler-free as I want the players to choose a campaign that they are interested in playing. For example, here is what I would give as a Shackled City AP summary.

Shackled City Summary

This campaign is largely set around a city that is built in the mouth of a dormant volcano (which totally won't erupt at some point during the campaign! :-D). An evil organisation is trying to open a gate to a plane of Hell and it is up to the PC's to try and stop them.

The campaign has a mix of urban, dungeon and planar adventures as well as a number of roleplaying encounters. It is relatively light on wilderness adventuring. Demons and dragons feature prominently in the campaign.

So as you can see, I don't mind if a bit of the campaign is "spoiled" up front. While it may appear like I'm giving too much away, I don't want the players to get halfway through the campaign before they decide that the aren't really interested in fighting demons.

Plus, after a few sessions players either forget about what I mentioned in my elevator pitch or the general overarching plot of the campaign is revealed anyway.

Olaf the Stout

Olaf the Stout wrote:

Congrats Robert. I hope my group gets there some day. We are just about to start the Demonskar Ball tonight so there's still 9 adventures to go. A lot of adventuring left to do but I think we'll get there eventually.

You do have a little ways to go. :D My group is only at the Pit of Seven Jaws so we've got a ways to go too.

2 and a half years on and we are nearly finished Foundations of Flame. We had a 7 month baby hiatus after the birth of my second child but other than that we have been playing fortnightly. I expect that we'll wrap this up by around the end of the year.

I've still got 3 of the starting 5 players in the campaign. I only lost the other 2 as they went overseas to work on a cruise ship, lucky buggers! Rather amusingly their father was one of my replacement players. :-D

Olaf the Stout

shakespear wrote:

You had me until you added commonalities. That serves no purpose. This isnt a Collectible mini game, its just collectible minis.

Why? this isnt a game. Unless......

Anyway, I'll buy what I want on the aftermarket and save a ton of money.

You understand that the very aftermarket you plan on going to is the reason that commonalities exist, right?

Say you have a three-mini set (for the sake of simplification). You have a lich, a goblin, and a human rogue.

Let's say you manufacture equal numbers of each - so 100 liches, 100 goblins, 100 human rogues.

Let's say you have a Typical DM. Typical DM wants ten goblins (because encounters call for hordes of goblins), five human rogues (because having a few human rogues on hand is a good idea), and one lich (because liches are practically an entire encounter unto themselves, and you'll probably never see more than one at a time).

Let's say you have 20 Typical DMs, and they go to the aftermarket to buy exactly what they're looking for: 10 goblins, 5 rogues, and 1 lich each.

They get their liches, no problem. 20 liches are bought, and the aftermarket retailer has 80 liches left, and he will never get rid of them because no one needs more than one lich.

They get their rogues, just barely. They all have exactly the number of rogues they want, and the aftermarket retailer has sold through his stock.

They don't get their goblins, because there are only 100 goblins to go around and all of the DMs combined need 200. The aftermarket retailer knows that goblins are going to be in demand, so he raises the price.

The end result?

The aftermarket retailer has 80 liches he will never sell, and your Typical DM only has a 50% chance of getting the goblins he wants, and he's forced to pay exorbitant prices for them because there aren't enough to go around.

This is what happens when your set doesn't use varying commonalities. If you did use commonalities, you could manufacture 200...

Actually I would argue that it doesn't work like that. Using your example, what would happen is that the manufacturer would have a fair idea that their customers are likely to buy quite a few goblins, some rogues, but very few liches. They would then take that into account when they made the minis.

So the manufacturer would produce a heap of goblin minis, a reasonable amount of rogue minis and a smaller amount of liche minis. Here is where the economics come into it though.

From all reports, manufacturing pre-painted minis have a large fixed cost attached to each different mini you make. This is because, for each one, you have to pay for the sculpt, the production mold (very expensive for plastics), the painted master copy, etc. The variable cost (i.e. basically the plastic, paint, packaging and handling costs for each mini) is not that high in comparison.

Given that there are high fixed costs and smaller variable costs, the more of each mini you can sell, the lower you can price them and still make a profit.

Let's assume that the fixed costs are $1,000 per mini (totally unrealistic, I know) and the variable costs are $1 per mini.

If you make 10 minis then it costs $101 per mini.
If you make 50 minis then it costs $21 per mini.
If you make 100 minis then it costs $11 per mini.
If you make 200 minis then it costs $6 per mini.
If you make 1,000 minis then it costs $2 per mini.

With a non-random method a manufacturer would make roughly as many minis as they thought they could sell.

As DM's want multiple Goblin minis they would make 1,000 of them (just a number I have plucked out of the air for this example), be able to sell them at a low price and still make a profit.

There may be reasonable demand for Rogues so they would manufacture 200. However, they would have to charge 3 times as much for them compared to the Goblin minis just to cover their costs.

There may be small demand for Liches so the manufacturer is left with a problem. Let's assume the manufacturer guesses there is demand for about 50 Liches. In order to cover costs the Liches would need to be sold at $21 per mini.

At that price there may be people that want a Liche mini, but they aren't willing to pay $21 for one. The manufacturer can't afford to sell it for less than $21 per mini as they need to at least cover the cost of producing the mini. So all the Liche minis remain unsold at that price.

There are 2 options available to the manufacturer at this point. Either they make 100 of the Liche mini and hopes they underestimated the demand or they simply don't make a Liche mini.

If they decide to make 100 of the Liche mini there is still a risk that not all the minis sell and they make a loss on that mini. They also probably have to deal with people complaining that $11 per mini is too much for just a Liche.

As a result most businesses would take the safe option and simply not make the Liche mini.

The other option is to go with random minis. Since the consumer can't see what mini is in the box the manufacturer can effectively sell a Liche mini to someone who doesn't actually want a Liche mini. Increasing the sales of those minis with smaller demand enables them to create a wider range of minis than would be profitable using a non-random model.

The problem with random minis is that some people will refuse to buy them and others will complain about the random distribution.

So you're damned if you do and damned if you don't really.

Olaf the Stout

Ok, I'm assuming that this is well and truly covered in the adventures themselves but, after reading the summaries for the 6 Jade Regent adventures, my first question was, "What happens if Ameiko gets killed?"

It seems like she is the heir to the throne so having her killed could possibly stop the campaign dead (no pun intended) at that point.

Is there steps in place to make sure this doesn't happen, while at the same time, not getting into a situation where the players don't worry about Ameiko's safety as they know that she is too important to the plot for the DM to have her die?

Olaf the Stout

Just racked up deaths 2 and 3 in the campaign. Despite knowing that they were at the very least facing Vitriss Bale, a green dragon, and the fact that he had been in Karran Kural (sp?) for many, many years they did not take any precautions for the fight with him.

The combat was a cakewalk for Vitriss. He wiped the floor with the party, killing both the 12th level Warblade and the 12th level Hexblade whilst only taking damage from a Disintegrate cast on him by the Conjurer. The party ran off with their tails between their legs to regroup (and raise dead! :-D).

The second time they came back with Freedom of Movement, Haste and Fly spells on, as well as Resist Acid. This time the fight went much more according to plan. The only casulty was the Monk, who was killed when he copped a full attack from Vitriss. Luckily the Favoured Soul was close enough to administer a Revivify and prevent a more permanent death.

Olaf the Stout

Hi guys,

Can you please cancel my AP subscription. No real issues, other than having enough adventures for now and the next AP not really pulling me in as a must-have.

Thanks,

Olaf the Stout

That's ok Liz. Things going AWOL seems to be par for the course with things relating to this order. :-D

The main thing is that you got the message that my packages had arrived before the order was sent out. I had this awful feeling that the replacement order was going to be sent out and then a couple of hours later someone at Paizo would see my post about not needing it.

Now I have my goodies and don't have to worry about sending packages back. That, and the postal system maintains its record of only having lost 1 of my packages (out of quite a few now).

Olaf the Stout

Just FYI, I have yet to receive an e-mail from anyone at Paizo today about this. So if an e-mail has been sent I haven't got it. :D

Olaf the Stout

Judging by your above post I take it that Liz has seen my e-mail. Unfortunately the messageboards went down for maintenance just as I was editing my post.

I said this in my e-mail but I'll repeat it here. It seems that I was wrong about the replacement order already having being sent. I checked the order status and the replacement package is still listed as pending.

Please don't send this order out as I have the items!!!! :-D

Thanks for your help,

Olaf the Stout

Liz,

I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that the 2 missing packages arrived today! :-D

The bad news is that the 2 missing packages arrived just days after you sent off the replacement order. :-(

Oddly enough the packages don't seem to have taken a wrong turn anywhere that would explain their hold up. The boxes are still in pretty good condition too. One is a little banged up, but not too bad. So I'm at a loss to understand how these 2 packages arrived a month and a half after the first 2 packages, even though all 4 were sent on the very same day.

What do you want me to do with the replacement packages when they arrive?

Olaf the Stout

It looks like it will be in two packages Olaf.

Thanks Liz. I'll post in here when I receive the packages.

Olaf the Stout

Thanks for that Liz. I got the e-mail about the replacement order today. Do you know if this will be coming in 1 package or 2 packages?

Olaf the Stout

Anything turned up at Paizo's end? I still haven't seen either missing package here.

Olaf the Stout

Liz the 2 packages I am missing are:

1 x Ultimate Toolbox
1 x Pathfinder Chronicles Miniatures: Soulstone
1 x Pathfinder Chronicles Miniatures: Gebite Fleshgrinder Torture Table
1 x GameMastery Item Cards: Second Darkness Deck

and

1 x The Order of the Stick #4: Don't Split the Party
1 x Pathfinder Chronicles Miniatures: Totem of Angazhai
1 x GameMastery Item Cards: Legacy of Fire Deck
1 x GameMastery Item Cards: Curse of the Crimson Throne Deck
1 x Falling: The Goblin Edition

Olaf the Stout

No worries Liz. I'll check back in here in a week or so. Let me know if you want the details of the 2 packages that I am still waiting on.

Olaf the Stout

I know it has only been a week since I last posted, but I just thought I would let you know that I have now received part 5 of the Adventure Path, which was shipped on January 13th.

That was almost 4 weeks after the previous order was shipped so I'm guessing that the 2 missing packages aren't going to turn up on my end. :(

Olaf the Stout

No worries, will do. It would be odd if they are returned considering that 2 of them made it here just fine and a number of packages have been sent to that address without any problems.

Behold the wonders of the international postal system.

Olaf the Stout

Edit: Cosmo, do you need to know which of the 2 packages I am still to receive?

Hi there,

I am still waiting on 2 of the 4 parcels from order #1564384. The first 2 parcels arrived on 4/1/2011 but I haven't seen the other 2 yet. I have had some parcels in the same order take longer than others, but there has never been a gap of over 2 weeks before.

I am in Australia, so I understand that shipping times are longer. I think the order is currently only just over the expected transit time of 12-20 business days. However, since I received the first 2 parts of the order 16 days ago now (and all 4 parcels were all sent on the same day) I am a little worried.

On top of that, today I received an order I made from KenzerCo that I placed on the 1/1/2011. So if their package, which was sent 2 weeks later, has reached me then I am thinking my remaining Paizo packages may have taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Olaf the Stout

I'm pretty sure the PDF sales are on a 2 week delay so that Paizo can basically guarantee that subscribers get access to the books before non-subscribers.

I think a lot of subscribers would be a bit annoyed if subscribing resulted in them getting access to the adventures after non-subscribers. Some would probably get so annoyed that they would drop their subscription, which is obviously an outcome that Paizo want to avoid. Hence the (roughly) 2 week cushion.

Olaf the Stout

My PC's are still going strong. They're currently level 11 an saving Redgorge from the Blue Duke, Stormblades and Cauldron army (thanks DelvesDeep for the adventure outline!).

Still only 1 PC death, from the Ogre Zombies, back in the Kopru Ruins. Last session a Dire Wolf animal companion died after taking 4 x 9d6 Cones of Cold and failing 3 of the 4 saves.

Apart from that they party has been going strong. Kaurophon was barely a speed bump in the road. I think he got a surprise round action and maybe a first round action before he was dogpiled and killed.

Olaf the Stout

I second/third/whatever the various Silent Hill video game soundtracks. I recently used them when I ran my first ever Call of Cthulhu game. The awesome horror music from those soundtracks really set the mood for the game.

I didn't play the spooky/creepy music the whole time, just when the players were in a situation where something "could" happen to them. It really put the players on the edge of their seats and brought the tension levels right up. You could literally see the fear in the players' eyes whenever I reached for the play button on my iPod.

It was the first time I've ever noticed that the background music has had such a big impact on my game.

Olaf the Stout

I figured that would be the case. You would get people complaining that they didn't know about the other (cheaper shipping) product or something similar. Oh well, you can't keep them all happy.

In any case, I don't think the fact that you receive them from the distributor that way should be the customer's problem. If you are getting them from the distributor looking like that then I would be having a word to the distributor.

But hey, you guys have been running this business successfully for quite a few years now so I'm sure you know what the best course of action is here.

Olaf the Stout

Ptolus had a nice CD-ROM with a bunch of PDF files (including Chaositech and The Night of Dissolution, IIRC).

A number of products from Necromancer Games had a codeword that could be used to download web supplements.

But yeah, Paizo subscribers get the best treatment overall, as the associated PDF downloads have the added benefit of occasional updates deemed necessary, and there isn't actually a proper comparison for that as the above examples are specific one-shot products or just a limited part of the printed version.

To be completely fair, Ptolus was a $120 book, which is hardly the standard. On top of that, while the CD included with the product included PDF's of several books, it did not include a PDF of Ptolus. If you wanted to have Ptolus on PDF as well as hardcover you had to pay extra for it.

Those that pre-ordered Ptolus did get a couple of the chapters in PDF in the lead-up to the book's release but that was as much a marketing exercise to get people to pre-order as much as anything else. I didn't buy any of the PDF's for Ptolus so I can't remember how much the cost, but they weren't exactly cheap.

Olaf the Stout

I'm not sure why people are attacking Malaclypse. I like Paizo as much as anyone else here. I think that they do a great job. And, unlike some other companies, when customers have issues there normally go out of their way to see that they are resolved to the customer's satisfaction. That said, they are not (and have not claimed to be) perfect.

Personally I can understand Malaclypse disappointment with the product that he received. The one vinyl battlemat that I ordered (about 12 years ago now) was from Crystal Caste and came rolled up in a mailing tube. As you would expect from being rolled up like that, the mat had a curve to it that required a bit of weight being placed on it for some time in order to get it to lay flat.

If I ordered a mat from Paizo I would expect the same thing to happen. What I would not expect would be for the mat to turn up looking like the mat in Malaclypse's photo. I would be pretty disappointed if that arrived in the post for me.

If given the preference, I would prefer the vinyl mats to come in a mailing tube, even if this cost more to post and meant that you couldn't combine them in an order with another product.

If you are going to continue to pack them into boxes in the future, I think there at least needs to be a warning in the product description so that those ordering the product know what to expect and can choose not to the order the product if they aren't happy with that packaging option.

As an aside, someone from Paizo stated that the system Paizo uses means that the mats could either be posted in a tube or in a box, but there was no way to provide customers with a choice, it was either or. The tube option is more expensive as it always ships separately, while the box would allow you to combine the mat with other things.

As a possile solution to this problem, could you not create 2 different products. Product 1 is called "Vinyl mat in a tube". It has the parameters set so that it cannot be posted with anything else and always ships separately. Product 2 is called "Vinyl mat in a box". It is just like a normal product and can be shipped with other items. The product description for both items would have a link to the other item and explain the differences between the 2 items.

This would allow customers to choose the shipping option they prefer, whist still working within the limitation of the Paizo ordering system. Everybody wins! Can anyone see a flaw that I may have overlooked in my plan? I can't but there probably is one! :-D

Just my 2 cents.

Olaf the Stout

Well at least I can stop wondering why I can't get part 2 of the Serpent's Skull AP to download! :D

Olaf the Stout

Olaf the Stout wrote:

I've just tried to make an order using the Holiday Discount Code. Everything was fine until I entered the code. After I entered the code in the shipping price switched to the higher of the 2 options and will not switch back to the cheaper option, even if I try and reselect it.

Any suggestions as to what I should do?

Olaf the Stout

I just looked into the order and I see both the standard postal rate and USPS Priority shipping options as available options. Are you not seeing these?

Thanks,
cos

I can see both the options. I can even select the standard postal rate as my choice. However on the right hand side the shipping amount does not change, it stays at the higher shipping price, even after I select standard postage.

Olaf the Stout

I've just tried to make an order using the Holiday Discount Code. Everything was fine until I entered the code. After I entered the code in the shipping price switched to the higher of the 2 options and will not switch back to the cheaper option, even if I try and reselect it.

Any suggestions as to what I should do?

Olaf the Stout

The third package finally arrived today. From the looks of the writing on the envelope it must have been sent to the wrong place initially by the post office. That is why it was so late.

Thanks,

Olaf the Stout

Still no third package. It is now over a week later than the second package to arrive and 2 weeks later than the first package, despite them all being sent at the same time. What is the estimated shipping time for Standard Postal Delivery to Australia? (i.e. is the package now considered late?)

Olaf the Stout

Hi guys,

I recently made an order (#1271030) that was sent in 3 packages. The first part of the package arrived a week ago, the second part 2 days after that. However the third part still hasn't arrived. Is it unusual for 3 packages sent at the same time to arrive so far apart from each other?

The missing package is the one with just the 2 books in it, Welcome to Necroamerica and Las Vegas Crawl. That's good in that, if it is missing, I've lost the least amount of books. However I'd really like these 2 to complete my X-Crawl collection.

Olaf the Stout