Olaf the Stout's page

I saw the maps on the RPGenius website. If I were to download them how do I print them out to miniature scale? I have access to a colour laser printer so printing them out isn't really an issue for me.

Olaf the Stout

Does anyone know if there are Shackled City maps (in PDF or another format) that are suitable for use with miniatures? It would be great if there was as that way the players as well as the DM’s would be able to see all the great looking maps.

Olaf the Stout

Joins in the chorus. Access to the archive would be nice. Searching via key words is hit and miss at best.

Olaf the Stout

It looks like I will be going with Racing the Snake. You win John! :-)

In regards to the books that you were writing with Johnn Four, at one point he was writing an Encounter Essentials book (like a few years ago now!). Do you know if this is still floating around on a back burner somewhere or should I forget it ever existed as an idea?

Olaf the Stout

I checked out those issues last night and it definitely isn't either of those organisations. Thanks anyway. I'll have a look through all my issues of Dragon on the weekend and see if I can find that elusive article. I bet now that it wasn't a Guild Secrets article and was just a feature article on various Mage Guilds or Bardic Colleges. Anyone know of any issues before #330 that had an article on something like that?

Olaf the Stout

Do you mean the Cult of Vecna, or something more mundane and possibly Gnomish?

It definitely wasn't the Cult of Vecna. It was like a Bardic College or something similar except they focused on information and knowledge. I can't remember the name of the section it was in. Something like Guild *******. Each month it had a couple of pages on a different guild.

Olaf the Stout

Can anyone remember a Dragon issue that featured a Guild or Organisation that basically were hoarders of information. They liked to keep every little scrap of information just in case it was useful at some point in the future. I thought it was a great concept and I'm just trying to find the article again. I'm sure it is from a issue somewhere between about #280 and #320 but I could just be misremembering.

Thanks in advance,

Olaf the Stout

UltimaGabe, while you are entitled to your opinion and are correct in stating that approval for the hardcover has not been given, James Jacobs has said on these boards that Paizo DOES want to do an AoW Hardcover. No one is forcing them. They are choosing to do it of their own choice.

As such I imagine that they would be happy to see people taking an interest in a possible hardcover. Lots of interest would be much better for them than no interest at all. Yes it would be a little frustrating since they still don't have approval for the book yet but that is hardly the fault of the fans.

Olaf the Stout

One vote for "Racing the Snake"!

(Boy, I hope they don't realize that I'm the author! Yikes! Why am I still typing?)

Congrats on coming up with an adventure that is a bit different to the rest John. While you're here perhaps I can pick your brain a bit about the adventure. I don't have it on me and it has been a while since I have read it so it may be dealt with in the adventure, but why doesn't Trend just Teleport his daughter to the wedding? Also, how do you deal with PC's using Alter Self or Polymorph to change their appearance to look more like Trend's daughter (I can't remember her name!)?

Olaf the Stout

Just so I know that I'm awarding XP correctly for my group, could someone please explain to me the difference between awarding XP by EL and awarding XP by CR. Which one tends to end up awarding more XP?

Thanks,

Olaf the Stout

I've been running the Freeport trilogy of adventures by Green Ronin, set (funnily enough) on the island trading port city of Freeport. I also ran "The Stink" from Dungeon #105 as well. We are probably at the stage now where we are tired of city adventures so I am looking for something with a bit of a wilderness bent to it.

The 5 PC's are:
Sorcerer 5 concentrating on Ice Magic
Greatsword wielding Cleric 5/Ranger 1 with the Travel and Strength domains.
Fighter 5/Sorcerer 1 who is an expert with a Longbow and looking at getting the Arcane Archer prestige class.
Spiked chain wielding Barbarian 2/Rogue 4

Olaf the Stout

My group is about to finish their latest adventure and I am tossing up between 2 adventures to run next. Should I run Torrents of Dread from Dungeon #114 or should I run Racing the Snake from Dungeon #105?

Both look to be a lot of fun. Racing the Snake looks very different to anything that I have seen before and Torrents of Dread has the old Isle of Dread thing going for it.

So which one should I go with?

Olaf the Stout

Necromancer Games are also talking about releasing an AP style product on their boards. Necromancer Games products have tended to come out later than originally anticipated though so you may be waiting a while.

Olaf the Stout

Are you sure that the 2 and 3 year subscriptions aren't available in all US States? I'm pretty sure all us internationals can get them so why not all of the US?

Olaf the Stout

Although I do think that you would be targeting a smaller market by making it basically a GM only book, there is very little in the way of competing books in this area. The only books that discuss GM'ing as the main topic of its books are Robin's Laws to Good Gamemastering, Game Mastering Secrets by Grey Ghost Press and the DMG II (at least in part).

Considering that every game has to have a GM there is not really a whole lot of products out there that specifically deal with helping them out.

Olaf the Stout

Is that true? I would think that more than one in four players also DM, and of those that don't, enough will intend to try some day and so may also want the collection.

I'll also chime in my support for both the Monte and Ray articles.

And, if the only way to make this work for Paizo was to make it a PDF only product, I'd still buy it.

Obviously I am making an educated guess since I don't have any hard data to base it off. However, in my current group, out of 6 people, only 2 of us DM. And considering that the other DM doesn't even own copies of the core books, he's not exactly likely to be buying a Dungeoncraft book.

However, as I have said in another thread, random anecdotes don't really mean anything.

Personally I think that it would be very reasonable to assume that not everyone that plays D&D also DMs. So at the very least, the target audience is smaller than a product that players can also use. How much smaller this market is debateable. I threw up the figure of about 1/4. It could be higher than this but I would guess that it would be 1/2 at the very most.

What are others thoughts on the issue? As for the PDF option, I would still definitely be interested in that, although dead tree format would be my first preference.

Olaf the Stout

Robin Laws would get my vote any day. I have loved all of his articles that appeared in Dragon magazine over the years. His "Guide to Good GameMastering" is equally good (some of the stuff he wrote in the DMG 2 was very similar to his Guide to Good Gamemastering.

Olaf the Stout

ajs we don't want to bring statistics in to this. People are much more comfortable with random anecdotes and something that happened to their friend's cousin's uncle. I think that your explanations are good. Some people will just believe what they want to believe though.

Based on what another poster has said, I don't think the price tracker website is necessarily a good indicator of price, especially if it is picking and choosing what prices to include in it's price analysis for particular minis.

Why is the price for some miniatures so high? Because some people are obviously willing to pay that amount. Lisa Stevens has clearly explained how she gets her prices. Paizo must be selling some minis at $60 otherwise the price would have come down by now. To claim otherwise is basically saying that Lisa is lying to us.

Unfortunately for those of you that are complaining about the price of minis I don't think that the situation will change. D&D minis are very profitable for Wizards in their current format. As a publically owned company they have to answer to shareholders when it comes to the bottom line. This means that some decisions will be made that aren't necessarily in line with what consumers want or think is fair.

And remember that no-one is forcing you to buy the minis. If they are too expensive, don't buy them. If enough people do this then WotC may rethink their strategy on them (and Paizo would lower the prices on their individual minis).

Olaf the Stout

Personally I think that Ray Winninger's Dungeoncraft articles would also fit well with Monte's articles. So much useful information could be found in his columns. If you added them together in a book I think that it would it would do well. Of course, when you make a DM book you are immediately shrinking the market for people that would buy the book to about 1/4 (or possibly less) than the entire D&D market.

Olaf the Stout

I put a group through the same one about 8 months ago. They scored in the bottom 3 or 4 I think. The PC's were only 2nd or 3rd level at the time so they had to rely on wits alone. Something they didn't have much of by the looks of it!

I imagine if I put my current group through it they would score a bit higher. The last group had some players that either gave up after 1 failed attempt or just weren't any good at those sorts of puzzles.

Olaf the Stout

They aren't called Side Treks anymore, but the shorter adventuers that once fell into this category do still appear in Dungeon now and then: in fact, we're pretty much always in desperate need for short adventures, since that lets us run longer adventures in the other two adventure slots for that issue.

I understand what you are saying James. A short Adventure sounds a lot better than a Side Trek, even if they are basically the same thing!

I find it funny how perception is more important than reality. People think that if one of their "Adventures" gets replaced by a "Side Trek" they are getting ripped off, even if the page count is the same.

Olaf the Stout

Side Treks used to be a fairly common item in Dungeon Magazine in the past. However since Dungeon switched to a monthly format I can't remember seeing one. What are the chances of them making a return?

I know that you have got a 3 adventures per issue format now but what if every now and again you replaced one of the adventures with 2 or 3 Side Treks instead? Or is the issue to do with the fact that you don't receive any Side Trek submissions anymore?

Personally I find that they can make good interludes between adventures (and can often lead to full adventures themselves) and can be useful when PC's need a little bit more experience so that they can level up before the next adventure.

So what are the chances of Side Treks returning?

Olaf the Stout

I'm about to start running SCAP and the consensus I seem to get from the message boards is that it is very tough. I currently have 5 players, and since the campaign is designed for 6, they're playing gestalt classes with 32 points for stat-buy. You guys think this is a good equalizer or should I add action points?

It's only 1 player difference. I know that the SCAP can be a bit of a meat grinder but I think that 5 gestalt characters may have too easy a time of things.

Just my 2 cents.

Olaf the Stout

Olaf the Stout wrote:

Frank, what is the name of this FR Adventure that you described above? And was it from Dungeon? If so, which issue?

It probably was from a Dungeon magazine, back in the 2nd ed. days. What I have is the DM's adaptation notes, which I have converted to 3e because I liked it so much. I don't know the source, though.

I could e-mail you the adventure if you want.

That would be appreciated if you could Frank. My e-mail address is ac (underscore) marafioti (at) hotmail (dot) com

Thanks,

Olaf the Stout

I'm trying to come up with an intro adventure for the campaign, but I want the adventure to be entirely within the walls of cauldron with no dungeoncrawling. (But housecrawling is OK)

One of my disappointments of the campaign is that there wasn't enough urban adventure for a campaign that featured an urban setting.

I'm trying to fit an adventure that was intended for Waterdeep into Cauldron. It has the aunt and uncle of one of the PCs coming to the PC's family's house, terrified. Their building is haunted and they won't go back. The aunt is affected by some supernatural contagion, and begs the PC to please check out the building. Building contains a store on the first floor, the aunt & uncle's apartment on the second, and rental apartments on the third, fourth, and attic. PCs find no undead, but a couple of traps, evidence of breaking and entering, and a hidden alchemical mix that makes the building smell like a corpse.

Doing some more investigation (or guarding the house that night) leads the PCs to the bad guy, who flies into the building and looks like a glowing undead while casting nasty touch spells. The PCs have to go through his house, which is guarded by skelletons and thieves to confront him at the top. He will most likely get away since at this point he will fly out of the window when the PCs burst in, being a 5th level wizard. The PCs discover deeds to the house they are in and other properties that the bad guy "haunted", then purchased for a lot less than they are worth. (Potential bonus treasure for PCs if they are willing to forge his signature on the deeds and claim the properties, which is in itself a moral quandry).

Although I like this adventure, I want to include more Caulron NPCs and organizations into it so the PCs gets to interact with the city during the adventure. Right now, I'm not going to use it. Maybe the DMG, DMG II, and Races of Destiny has some potential plots for an urban environment.

Frank, what is the name of this FR Adventure that you described above? And was it from Dungeon? If so, which issue?

Thanks,

Olaf the Stout

I got taken by it initially as can be seen by my first post. I figured it out after a couple of minutes though. I think that I was sucked in due to the fact that it has probably been 6 months to a year since I have looked at any of the SC stuff so I was wondering if people were playing tricks of whether my memory was just that bad.

In some ways I'm glad that at least my memory is still there!

Olaf the Stout

I feel like a bit of an idiot now. After reading the first post again and especially the bit about "My players stop reading here" I feel like a bit of a fool for being duped.

At least I wasn't the only one!

Olaf the Stout

Ok, is this some sort of practical joke? I checked the post dates to make sure the thread wasn't started on April 1st.

I have all the SCAP adventures from Dungeon and I am waiting for the hardcover book to come in the post. It has been quite a few months since I have looked at the adventures but nowhere do I remember seeing that Jeyna was a mindflayer. A few of the other claims made by some of the posters seem to be made up as well.

Can someone from Paizo please tell the more skeptical ones (like myself) whether this is actually true or is someone trying to pull the wool over our eyes?

Olaf the Stout

I plan on running the SCAP but to me the time between starting the first adventure and completing the final adventure seems too short. Does anyone else think so?

I think that the adventures should take place over several years of game time. This makes it easier to show the gradual change in Cauldron as time passes and it also stops PC's going from 1st level pushovers to all-powerful, nothing can defeat me adventurers in the space of a few months.

How long do most people take to complete the SC adventure path (in game time)? What sorts of things have you done in your game to try and extend the adventures out timewise (if anything)?