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 Recent Posts
I just thought Paizo would want to know that their tactic continues to work...Thanks to the pack of item cards I received with my Critical Hit Deck I'm currently in the process of figuring out how many packs of item cards and other Gamemastery items I want to order (Father's Day gift from my wife). Damn you all for producing good material that makes me want to buy it, ofttimes sight unseen in the case of Pathfinder. Okay, maybe not "damn you all". Only McArtor deserves that. :P So...if my new order is mostly item card packs, do I still get a free one thrown in? ;)
While I can't speak for the rest of his stat block, I believe Elminster was given those first six levels because in the first Elminster novel he dabbled in all those classes and hated wizardry before finally becoming a wizard himself.
I am just about to order a few decks and boosters and I was thinking about this. I would tend to agree with Amaril that boosters would probably sell better if you could be assured of getting the more common items rather than a random chance. Like him I don't want to buy a deck of adventure gear for each player since many of those cards would go to waste. But I would buy boosters that I was sure contained the "common" items that everyone has such as a backpack and bedroll. Perhaps for the weapon cards you could rearrange boosters so that you'd have one booster of all swords, and one of all blunt weapons, etc. Have a potion booster for the magic items separate from the rest, a ring booster, a wands/staves/rods booster, etc. It would probably mean a bit of work to make the allocations like that, but I think it would make the booster packs far more palatable for the average consumer to be able to know which cards they will get out of a booster the same as they know what they are getting from the full deck. See guys, I told you that you should get rid of Bulmahn and hire me instead as the resident architect/McArtor insulter. :)
Two of my three players (my wife and her sister) enjoy the RP aspect very much. Their characters are not quite diametrically opposed, but close (a LN monk/ and a CG stuck-up cleric of a love goddess...more to it than that, but that's the nutshell) so they enjoy bickering with each other about various things. The third player is a little harder to get involved as he is not as vocal as the other two, but he does have a very quirky character and a lot of the funniest things happen because of him. He plays a goblin fighter with a voracious appetite so, among other things, I ran an eating contest with the announcer sounding like the deep-voiced "lets get ready to rumble" guy from wrestling...I'm not a wrestling fan so I don't know his name. My group has actually spent the last five months of real time roleplaying out the events of a week in town so I was just wondering how much other groups do that too. The email RP items I was talking about are specific to each character, and aren't as interesting for the others. For example the cleric of the love goddess wants to be a dragon trainer (her race is a homebrew race that is descended from dragons so she reveres them). The email is specifically her first meeting with another of her race who is going to give her some tips and tricks to train her pet baby red dragon, and so she can start merging into a prestige class. The goblin fighter wants to take some rogue levels so I had him meet a halfling girl who wanted to learn how to fight like him and offered to teach him her knowledge of the streets in return.
Nice. Question for you...how much of the ball, etc. from your recent post was handled in game? I'm curious how much other groups do in-game for things like that. For items that are primarily for individual characters I like to handle them via email roleplaying so that it doesn't start to bog down the game itself. Certain things, even if done by a lone player in town, affect my whole group such as the cleric meeting with the sage, so I roleplay that out in game.
I run my game like that too. I have an overarching storyline, but every player has plenty to do to advance their character's personality besides what is going on in the storyline (though in some cases its directly related to the storyline). The storyline is just a framework and malleable too as it is only a general outline beyond what I currently have written up. That way I don't work myself into a corner. There has only been one point in the game where I somewhat railroaded the players. Very early on in the campaign, they thought about going back to the main city after finding a special item they needed to continue. I had plans for events that would happen in the city when they got back, but none of the plans were ready as I hadn't had a chance to clearly define them yet. My wife noticed my fleeting look of terror when they were deciding what to do and convinced the rest of the party to continue on the way I thought they would. I also try to foreshadow later events in the storyline which occasionally leads me perilously close to railroading as my party sometimes has a tendency to metagame. For example I recently introduced an ancient tower in the city that has lit up like a beacon. It's a foreshadowing of something that will happen quite a ways down the road, but the party decided it must be their next adventure. I had a very nice, pat reason why they couldn't get into the tower now, but they were still bristling about it a bit. It is sometimes difficult to get them out of the habit of believing that every foreshadowing event or red herring is somehow campaign related. Hopefully I can break them of that soon. :)
Whats the Savage Coast?The region that was the setting for the "Red Steel" campaign setting from about a decade or so ago. It was a swashbuckler type campaign with a lot of weird mutant stuff brought on by crazy magic metal. PC races included aranea, lupins, and rakastas. I never bought Red Steel, but I remember enjoying the write-ups about it in the Voyage of the Princess Ark in Dragon. Cinnabryl (I think that was the name of the red metal) was a pretty cool concept.
If it helps, I think of you like Cosmo from the Fugitive and U.S. Marshals (played by Joe Pantoliano). :)
^^^ Never heard of the man, but after visiting his website, all I can say is wow!Never heard of Larry Elmore...??? Blasphemy! ;) He hasn't been published as much lately, at least in magazines I've read, but in the 80's and early 90's he was the god of D&D artwork. He did probably a few dozen Dragon covers, along with a great deal of other artwork used in D&D. And man I wish Snarfquest was still around. Next to OOTS it was my favorite comic seen in Dragon.
Umm, I've only been posting since the "Big Announcement", so I only have 118, despite signing up on Paizo a few years ago. To be honest I didn't even realize the place had message boards until then. Since then though I've been a regular. Can I count posts at another few sites? They're for Civilization gaming but between the two I have around 10,000 posts. I used to be very active in democracy games. ;)
That IS her job. If she doesn't like it she should get a new one. First off, I seriously hope you weren't calling me that name. Second, where did I ever say I was going to treat them like dirt, or that Andrew did. I go out of my way to treat service people well. Though I have a job in architecture I'm still a "service person" of a sort too as I have clients I work for. These clients EXPECT me to do my job or they will take their business elsewhere. They also want me to do it well. I also expect that people do the job they are in. If they're not going to do their job then I will take my business elsewhere if I can. It's called customer service. People or firms that practice it keep their customers; a good example is Paizo. As to the specific circumstance, this letter carried complained to a customer that his packages were making her job worse, along with disparaging him because of his hobby. In my book she was far in the wrong. If Andrew had reported her to the USPS I would have supported him all the way. I find it highly unlikely the USPS would want someone who complains about their job and disparages customers to remain with them. That's bad customer service, and they're already losing business to email, UPS, FedEX, etc.
Oh I know there are worse markets. Doesn't mean I can't complain about mine. :)
Okay I don't feel so bad now. That is worse than Sacramento, California. You can get a decent (smallish) house in a decent suburban neighborhood for $300k
Sigh. ::Rhoth wishes he could buy a house that large for that cheap in California:: The house I bought 6 months ago has several hundred less S.F. and our mortgage is several hundred more than that. Paizo staff, can you kick out Bulmahn so I can take his job as the resident architect and McArtor-baiter (that just doesn't sound right)?
Oh, oh, how about the Nether Regions?"Your group descends deep into the gash within the earth, the steamy smell of mold and dirt mixes into a disgusting odor that assaults your senses as you press further in. Only a few feet within the entrance, you are surrounded by darkness on all sides. This truly is 'the place where the sun don't shine.' You have entered... the NETHER REGIONS!" My group consists of 30-something professionals, but there is absolutely no way I could get that past them without plenty of snarky remarks. :D
I started at the age of 11 playing in a "homebrew". My first character was a cleric named Lizadrain (I didn't get to name him) who had one spell and a strength of 6. In my first adventure the DM ran our group of 1st level players up against an "eye monster". Guess what it was? I didn't know any better, and since I was a poor combatant I went up to it and cast my only spell...light...and blinded it long enough for the rest of the party to kill it. I was hooked. 21 years later I'm still playing, though there was a 10 year lull in there from the end of high school until just after I got married. I have to credit my wife and her sister with getting me back into gaming several years ago. My wife's sister had been a gamer for a few years and my wife was interested in trying it out too. We've been gaming in a few groups since then, and right now I'm DMing for them and my sister-in-law's boyfriend. Maybe they'll meet Lizadrain. He has been a part of every world I've created as a DM. :) Oh, and I still have all my first edition stuff...lots of modules (yeah that's what they were called back then), etc. and a copy of Dungeon #1. :)
That IS her job. If she doesn't like it she should get a new one.
That's almost exactly the way my campaign plays out between those gods. The followers of the god of death and the god of protection of the dead are among the most fanatical undead hunters around, even moreso than paladins (though a paladin follower of the god of the dead is quite the rabid undead hunter).
I run my campaign similar to how you run yours. I do have an overarching plot going, but the adventures are partially designed along developing characterization etc. The adventure my party is about to start is one I wrote based on a map from an old Dungeon (#40) and takes place underwater, which is a sop for my wife's character who is playing a homebrew underwater race (that can function on land as well). The hook for the adventure is because of the goblin character (yeah all my PCs aren't your standard, the third player is playing a homebrew race similar to half-dragons) wants the merchant guild that hired a goblin mushroom farming tribe to protect them better and the guild in turn wants the party to find out what happened to their underwater mines. Once they finish up the underwater portion, a few pieces of the first AoW adventure (specifically the encounters with Kullen and Filge's tower) are being upgraded as they fit in well with the mystery behind what is going on. The next major adventure is one based off the party's desire to confront a murderous nobleman they met on the road. When they finally get down to his town they will be run almost completely through Chris Wissel's Wingclipper's Revenge adventure as it fits in perfectly. The only major changes I'll be making is that Wingclipper is now the murderous nobleman they met and the slain girl was his girlfriend not his sister, along with changing out the hobgoblins for something else as the hobgoblin flavor in my world is different and they will be running into that different flavor later on in the campaign. The underwater adventure may tie in ultimately with the overarching plotline (I haven't decided yet, but it's written so that I can take it either way), but the Wingclipper one ties in with the overarching plotline as they will soon be heading that way again, deeper into the swamp, once they receive word from their patron that he needs them to head that way.
And also just because the adventures are part of an adventure path doesn't mean you can't take parts of them and insert them into your own campaign. I have no intention of ever running AoW or Savage Tide in their entirety because my group is embroiled in a homebrew campaign and we don't meet much (about two hours every other week, sometimes just once a month). My current campaign has the legs to last several years at this pace as the characters are only just at 4th level after a year and a half of gaming at this pace, so Paizo will likely be onto their 6th or 7th Varisia AP by the time our campaign is finished. But I have stolen portions of the AoW campaign already, along with portions of other adventures from Dungeon, and am currently in the process of culling out parts of Savage Tide to include as well. I use the APs just like I use any other adventure. I cull out what I want and can use into my own campaign, and I've noticed that items from the APs seem to make it into my campaign more often than stuff from other adventures.
In my homebrew world I have something similar to that. The god of death is also the TN god of nature. Death is a part of nature so the progression for that worked well for me. I also have a LN god of the dead who is considered the shepherd to allow the dead to find their way (kind of like Charon in Greek mythology). It's the god of undeath that is the evil one. :)
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