Rhothaerill's page

So what was the answer? And more importantly, did I win? ;)

I'm guessing he meant metagame as in what you were thinking while doing specific actions or making decisions, etc. Those are always fun.

Nailed it. :D

Ditto the above. Cosmo and Corey (and Vic too) have taken the time to answer every question or concern I've had.

Reading through D0, I noticed that Falcon's Hollow is supposed to be home to 1,400 persons. Is that correct? It seems a lot for a wild lumber outpost/town.

Also, the map seem to show buildings that could host maybe half of that figure, at most (IMHO).

As way of comparison, Diamond Lake was just above 1,000 inhabitants. The way I picture Falcon's Hollow from the module, it should probably be less, isn't it?

Any official or unofficial comments?

Thanks in advance!

Bocklin

I have to agree. I thought the same thing when I saw the map of the town. The only recourse would be to have most of those lumberjacks living outside of town.

Except it's wickedly easy to trace an alias back to the real person...

Hence the wildly disturbing "conversations" McArtor and Logue were having a few weeks back. ;)

I think the NDA would work, or randomly e-mail a different bunch of subscribers "Please download the latest product at (whatever HTTP) Report any errors you find to Its_all_the_gnomes_fault@paizo.com"

That way, you reward your testers with early sneak peaks, and if the product shows up on the pirate sites early (damned pirates) you have a smaller possible pool of thieves.

They could easily set up the "Betatest" PDFs with the same personalization structure that they do for their PDFs now. If anything did end up on the black market it would be easily traceable.

So Paizoians, do you think it's doable, or even something you could look into for the future?

Don't forget gift cards too so other people can give us Paizoey goodness. ;)

I think the idea has been bandied about before somewhere, but perhaps its time to suggest that there be a "limited pdf release" before the adventures go to print. Perhaps this could be handled similar to how video game Betas are run, with people signing up to test the adventure out for a day or two and give feedback. Video game manufacturerers require NDAs so that wouldn't be a big deal either.

I don't know how that would work with your deadlines, but it's something to think about. I feel safe in giving out a guarantee that you would have lots of people sign up for the test runs (including me), so perhaps you could have a revolving, limited number of people for each adventure, so that everyone who wants to would eventually get a turn in the queue. In return for the free editing that you receive from it, the test run people would get a look at the new adventures before everyone else, and that's a pretty cool thing too.

Oh, and Paizoians please don't get the idea that this is a slam against your editing skills because it's not. I think you guys do a great job, but with the deadlines you have, things like the errata already posted sometimes slip by. I've noticed several small items in the past few Dragon and Dungeon mags too.

I just bought Midnight Syndicate's D&D CD and used it for my last gaming session. It was a hit. While I intend to pick up some other CDs for more variety (LOTR, etc.), does anyone have any commentary on the rest of Midnight Syndicate's CDs? Are they good for fantasy gaming background music too, or are they better for horror-type games?

After reading this thread I feel blessed that my group is a generally agreeable bunch. They have plenty of arguments in-game, but they're all in character arguments. They play their characters as a fairly tight bunch in-game, but with arguments like a family would. It just so happens that my group is pretty much all related to each other either by blood or marriage so that's no surprise.

They also don't feel the need to disrupt the general flow of the game, but I also put extra work into designing elements that focus on each of the characters. I have an overarching plot line, but it's malleable not rigid. The party can go off and do their own thing that isn't necessarily related to the plot line (though I often try to integrate the new stuff to make it more powerful), but I also frequently ask them what they intend to do in the future so that I have an idea of how to go about designing the next adventure or integrating something from Dungeon. I'm not great at off-the-cuff design work if they go off the beaten path so I need to have enough of an idea in advance of what they want.

It works out well for my group. It sounds like the OP is not quite as fortunate.

That's a cool miniature Talion. I might have to pick that one up for myself. :) It'll be a while before I could use it as a character though. I'm in the middle of DMing a campaign right now.

As to the Critical Hit Deck, it finally made its appearance for the first time yesterday. The fighter in my group scored a critical against the giant crab they were fighting and pulled the card that causes recurrent bleeding damage from a slashing weapon. My whole party enjoyed that, though they liked it more when they set the crab on fire for cooked crab meat...one of the party members comes from an underwater race, and the fighter is a voraciously hungry goblin. :)

(no,not because I look pretty in pink nails,

From what I've heard you could probably get away with that. ;P

It's already available for download.

Thanks Phil.

I guess my group will have to wait a bit longer for it. I unveiled a few Gamemastery items at my last session and told them I'd have the combat pad soon. Oh well. :)

As far I understand it, D0 is not part of the subscription service so you'll only get one of those from your preorder. You can also download the free PDF version now that its out.

As to D1 yes you'll get two unless you ask Cosmo or Corey to delete your preorder.

D'oh. Didn't even think about doing that. It worked. Thanks Festivus.

However clicking on the link still does not work.

It's coming up as non-downloadable blank page for me. Has this happened to anyone else? I downloaded the pre-gen characters just fine.

Any new word on this yet? Last I heard was "late June".

Thanks.

This is one of my favorite pictures of me and my son at the pumpkin patch last Halloween.

My wife and son eating some popcorn

And my son helping with the laundry.

As to my gaming group, we don't have any group shots of us while gaming, but my wife is one of my group. I'd have to find some pictures of the rest of our group but it consists of my sister-in-law and her boyfriend.

For some reason I always imagined Fatespinner with glasses (horns optional). :)

Ah forgot about Keith Parkinson and Jeff Easley. Add those to my list above. :) And Valerie Valusek for black and white art.

I need to take a run through all my old Dragons and check out the covers to see if there are any other favorites I'm forgetting.

Elmore.

I was also a fan of Clyde Caldwell back in the day, but I haven't seen anything of his around lately. I also enjoyed the artwork of Brom and Tony DiTerlizzi as their art just screamed the campaign settings they were known for (Dark Sun and Planescape respectively). I haven't paid as much attention to which artist is which since getting back into D&D 5 years ago, but I have to say I'm starting to like Wayne Reynolds a lot, and before long I'll probably associate him with a single campaign setting (Golarion, still not quite sure of that name) like I did with Brom and DiTerlizzi.

I think the only reason they have stats for Tyralandi Scrimm is because she is James' character in Erik Mona's AoW game.

Back to the topic at hand... :)

Right now we don't have anyone under the age of 13 gaming with my group. All of my group are in their 30's, and we're a fairly raunchy bunch at times (group consists of 2 men and 2 women...the women, my wife and her sister, are the raunchier ones :D). There are several "dark" and "adult" elements that are part of the campaign I'm running that are fine for all of us.

For someone of a young age it would have to depend on the maturity factor. I have a 2 year old that I hope will start gaming in a few years, but I certainly won't be starting him out with the darker aspects. If down the road he proves that he can handle them then that's fine. I started gaming at age 11 and I was pretty mature for my age and able to handle dark and adult content. Not every kid is like that though.

I'm assuming I got it right, but we'll see next week. Last week's almost tripped me up because I was having a brain fart and forgot that burning hands was a reflex save not a will save.

BOZ wrote:

wasn't Boccob the first one?

Yes.

Not that he cares...

;D

Ugh!!! You deserve fifty lashes with a wet noodle for that. :P

It is just the expectation created by the canon, and not the canon itself that hurts

That's probably about the best explanation I've seen for the negative connotations FR seems to have at times.

Personally I never ran into the expectation of canon during my FR games. The one I DMed about 18 years ago was when the Realms was still relatively new as a campaign setting so there wasn't a proliferation of canon beyond the boxed set and a half dozen novels. A few years ago I was a player in an FR game set in the Dalelands, but none of the other players knew much about the Realms, not having read any of the books, etc.

James should add in the Knights of Iomedae, whatever they are. It's a great name, so I assumed it was already part of Varisia. :)

Must have been McArtor's character. :P

All right, where is Tyralandi?

Greyhawk...grew up on it.

Forgotten Realms...read plenty of books in FR.
Homebrew...Taking the best of all worlds.

Thoth-Amon

Exactly the same for me.

FR is my least favorite of the 3. I'm liking my homebrew a lot, but it's not even 5% of what I eventually want it to be. Greyhawk is still my favorite. So much D&D history is wrapped up in that setting, and there is just...something...about it that appeals to me.

Heh, I've actually been pronouncing Logue correctly then.

As to the sequel to Chimes at Midnight...can't wait for it. At the risk of exploding Nick's beholder-like head, I thought Chimes at Midnight was very well done. Back when it came out my current party was just forming so I hadn't really thought about running it.

But after reading this thread I just realized that in my current campaign I've been setting up a city watch inspector as a recurring NPC without even realizing it. It wouldn't be a stretch to bump him up into megalomania. And while the city my campaign is based in isn't nearly as large or cosmopolitan as Sharn I could probably massage it enough to fit. The level range is almost right on where my party will be during the time I could run it too.

Sweet!

Yeah, then it would be much easier for me to avoid anything written by that Craig Shackleton guy.

Just kidding Craig. :D

Interesting. I'll be reading this one.

It's not often you see a dwarven barbarian. :)

llaletin wrote:

Nicolas Logue wrote:

Ah, but what an Eberron adventure! ;-)

Out of curiosity, what Lv PCs is the adventure for?

I would say its the mid-level adventure. The low level is supposed to be the "Kill Bargle" adventure. And the Savage Tide is the high level. Also, I think this Eberron adventure has that Sherlock Holmes type character from the previous Dungeon adventure with the train wreck.

Ah, in that case Logue definitely wrote it.

Ah, but what an Eberron adventure! ;-)

Why do I get the feeling Logue wrote it. :P

According to WotC, they do plan on keeping Demonomicon in their DI, since it's so popular. They want to provide material that large groups are crying out for, and Demonomicon is one of them.

...only because Paizo did so well with it...

;)

with all the work that has been put into the Demonomicon, is it a possibility to release them in a PDF format in the future, it would be great to have them all in one eash format to refrence.

Only if WotC does it, or allows Paizo the license to do it.

Aberzombie wrote:

By the way, isn't it like 6:30 pm there? Go home already!

I'm home now. 6:30 is actually an EARLY day for me, but since I roll in to work at about 10:30 AM... staying past 6:30 isn't really that bad at all. :-)

Are you absolutely SURE you can't fire Bulmahn and hire me? ;)

I don't have anything to add. I just wanted to post here to continue the Belkar tradition. :D

I don't know about a real world equivalent, but I can mention that in most of the books I've read about Greyhawk, St. Cuthbert is mentioned as being a LN deity that allows only LG and LN clerics. No LE allowed.

Rambling Scribe wrote:

Armour making characters hard to hit instead of absorbing damage. Makes no sense.

Isn't there an alternate ruling that makes armor give DR in like Unearthed Arcana or something?

Yes there is.

As to armor making people harder to hit, I just look at it as they are still hit if the attack roll is close to the armor class number, but the weapon just clangs off the armor or shield instead of causing damage.

Mike McArtor wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

The goddess of love has a wider portfolio than simply love. And she has a pretty cool backstory (her favored weapon is a glaive, for example... not a weapon you might associate with the goddess of love!). I believe she's also the goddess of art, and the primary bard goddess.

Yuppers. I believe her portfolio is still beauty, art, love, music.

Which begs the question "What does she use that glaive for?

You don't want to know. ;)

Thanks Cosmo. Just wanted to make sure.

With regard to Erik's question...it is unlikely I or my group would switch, at least not for a while. I have a lot of money invested in v3.5, and as the DM I also tend to drive what the rest of my group does. They're happy with what we have now, and I have enough material for my current campaign that it could last years before it's finished (at the rate we're able to play).

Down the road I might look into v4.0, but it would take a lot to get me to switch wholesale, and by extension my group wouldn't switch without me unless we had a DM change, and that's unlikely. I'd be even less likely to switch if v4.0 were not OGL and Paizo was unable to produce content for it.

Yeah, I disagree with the OP's supposition that an AP that has you dealing with demons and navigating "enemy of my enemy" situations is by definition unheroic. Even for a paladin. But I also disagree with the notion that charging full bore in to a fight to the death with every demon or evil thing you run into should be the default characterization of a paladin.

I see so many people play paladins that are incapable of or extremely resistant to parley, subtlety, stealth, attacking from ambush or other useful combat tactic, and I don't understand it at all. There's is nothing anywhere that (to me) supports this most common characterization of paladins.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I dislike it when paladins are represented as one-note "slay all evil all the time" types. There are so many more ways to play a paladin, including those with shades of grey. The one-note type is not only boring for me, but if played as it usually seems to be played (based on what I've seen from WotC messageboards, etc.) it tends to create a strain on the rest of the party, or workarounds like playing the paladin as ignorant, etc.

Probably the most enjoyable paladin I ever played was when I rejoined my old group after about a year off. Some of them were initially reluctant that I wanted to play a paladin, since not all of their characters played within the laws, but I created a paladin of Sune the love goddess of the Forgotten Realms. Instead of being your typical crusader against evil type, nor was he the "snitch on everyone who breaks the law" type; he was a crusader for Sune's ideals of love, beauty, etc. He still fought evil, especially ugly evil :), but it wasn't his passion. He got along very well with the rest of the party.

Unfortunately that group broke up because of events beyond my control, but since then I've become a DM for another group that includes two of the players in the old group. We still talk about that paladin on occasion. :)

The alignments have been skewed for me ever since I started posting here. I assumed it was just because of the forum software since I had never seen it used before.

I usually browse with IE7 at home and IE6 at work if it's necessary to know.

There are worse people to suck up to than the customer service enforcer. :)

Did you receive my bribe yet Cosmo? ;)

The D1 still shows on my order list as well, though Corey told me in her response to my email that it was removed. I'm assuming it's done and just a glitch that it still shows up, but I do want to make sure I don't receive two.

Thanks.

And when we're able to combine it with Gamemastery and other stuff, then it will be nearly insignificant.