Robert Head's page

Actually, before the PCs are 1st level characters, what are they? You cannot be born a 1st level Ranger, but if you a 1st level Commoner why does this not carry over to character...

I agree that this is a big, ugly wart on the face of the D&D's design. The reasons are historical.

As written, all creatures get their racial hit dice, except for 1-hit-die Humanoids. Humanoids don't exist until they have a class. I guess a commoner child "trades in" his level of Commoner for a level of Ranger when he graduates, or something. Yuck.

In my campaign world, everyone takes a level of their race before their first class. There are issues (skill points, etc.) because the game wasn't designed that way, but I greatly prefer it.

Just wanted to mention that the database server went down for a few hours this morning, but it's feeling much better now. 8 ]

Carry on.

BTW, over the last several months, we've fixed or at least mollified most of the difficulties mentioned earlier in this thread. Yea!

I just checked out the preorder page and the promotional PDF and ...

Hey! There are spoilers for my players in the description! Of course they all want to buy the book to run the campaign themselves one day, but now I will have to tell them to stay away from it until we finish.

I have removed the spoilers from the description.

Cheers!
- rob

Whadda ya think?

I'm not against it.

Are others interested?

If there is at least one play group interested, I'd be happy to create the forum.

We'll take a look and see if we can replicate the problem.

Hmm... yeah.

For now, the copy and paste workaround is the way to go.

We used to show the message creation box in context at the bottom of the thread which eliminated the need to open a second window, but when we launched the pagination feature we lost that.

Gary and I will take a look at making this easier. One option is to not limit how long the quote can be and let you remove what you don't care about. Another option is to restore thread context so it's easier to copy and paste additional quoted content.

But alas, Wil Save is here until the contract expires.

What gives you that impression?

: )
rob

Go check out our new downloads at:

http://paizo.com/dungeon/resources/downloads

Courtesy of the Dungeon staff.

Enjoy!
- rob

cure light wounds

What I find interesting is the fact that Wheaton refuses to address any of the criticism thus directed at his column. In this, he is fairly unique, since everything gaming figure I know has, from time to time, stepped up to the plate to take on his or her detractors. And it makes you wonder if Wil's silence isn't some form of tacit agreement with the criticism, especially since this is supposed to be his big debut and he has chosen to remain aloof and above the fray of those people he claims to support and game among.

Even in his everyman garb, Wil is still seperated from the gaming community. Even when he's trying to be one of the guys, he's the farthest thing from it. No matter how many posts are devoted to his column, for good or for bad, Wil chooses to hide behind his blog as if nothing's wrong. What a world to live in. D&D seems closer to reality than that.

Wow. Easy on the hot sauce there, buddy!

What will be required to play this new hardbound release? Will it only include the three core books, or, will there be references to other books - many articles in 'Dungeon'have done so in the past. For example, 'For spell X, refer to the 'Fiend Folio', et cetera.

TSCA? SCAP? Anyway...

I'll let the editorial staff give the final word, but I believe we will be following the same policy as in the original Dungeon articles -- anything not from the core books is provided, at least in enough detail to play the creatures and NPCs in the adventure.

Thanks for the heads up.

We're looking into it.

- rob

The $60 price sounds high, but Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil is only 192 pages, softcover, and $29.95, so the price isn't all that bad if it's 400 pgs+ and hardback.

Word. Here's the math.

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (Softcover):
$29.95 / 192 = 15.6 cents per page.

Shackled City (Hardcover)
$59.95 / 416 = 14.4 cents per page.

Cheaper? For a hardcover?

Now lets talk about why this is awesome again. : )

Feeling... irresistable... urge... to... preorder now.

- rob

<staring blankly>Yes Master!<placing preorder /></staring blankly>

oooooo... valid tag structure.

I like you!

The Dragon Compendium is now available for preorder.

The Shackled City Adventure Path is now available for preorder.
http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/p/paizoPublishingLLC/byBrand/dungeon/v5748 btpy7dx9

Have at it!

Cheers,
- Rob

Don't forget about the plasma center. Plus, you get orange juice and a cookie!

No joke. My cousin used to sell blood for Magic cards.

Paizo will be releasing two compilation hardcovers later this year.

Dungeon Classics: The Shackled City Adventure Path™
This much-rumored, highly anticipated release will be available as a single hardcover in July.

The Dragon Compendium
This collection of the most popular "classic" articles from throughout Dragon magazine's 29-year history is scheduled for release in October.

Download the details at http://paizo.com/download/news/PaizoCompilations2005.pdf (252k PDF)

Paizo will be releasing two compilation hardcovers later this year.

Dungeon Classics: The Shackled City Adventure Path
This much-rumored, highly anticipated release will be available as a single hardcover in July.

The Dragon Compendium
This collection of the most popular "classic" articles from throughout Dragon magazine's 29-year history is scheduled for release in October.

Download the details at http://paizo.com/download/news/PaizoCompilations2005.pdf (252k PDF)

The party comes upon an isolated Gnome village, population ~800. 25 years ago, most of the female children of the village were carried away in a Bugbear raid. Today, the loveliest of the survivors has reached marriagable age, and the courtship (34 different guys competing for her hand) is turning ugly, threatening to throw the whole village into chaos and potential ruin.

Meanwhile, outside of town, a tribe of Goblin bandits is lurking, ready and willing to take advantage of the chaos.

Moreover, this picture is done in very good taste. Certainly much better than any so called "gentleman's" magazines and even quite a few computer and gadget magazines in the market today. Aesthetically better and sexually more toned (down).

In fact, there are quite a few entries in the Louvre and in other museums that I would find much more sexually explicit AND arousing, despite their being aesthetically superior. As a parent, I would very much want my children to be exposed to the sight and form and beauty of human adult...

I feel very similarly, Roxlimn. There are certainly images in the checkout line at the grocery store that are a lot more sexualized and less tasteful. The painting is quite beautiful, and for that reason I am happy to let my kids (girls 7 and 4) see it. Then again, I was a dance major in college, so I guess I'm over the whole "our bodies are *bad*, m'kay?" thing that lurks deep in the American collective psyche and makes phenomenons like Britney Spears and Lil Kim possible.

In the end, people just have different world views and have different levels of comfort with themselves and the world, and I hope we all respect that. For example, I'd wager serious money that a healthy portion of the US population would find the caption at the bottom left by far the most offensive part of the cover. Serving a demon price? Holy crap! No way could I show that to my in-laws.

I've ordered several times from the store so far (I don't own a car, which can make shopping a pain). Good selection and everything has gone smoothly so far. Kudos!

It's so nice to get positive feedback. : )

I'm pretty happy myself with how smoothly it has gone, even in these first few months. And we're making significant improvements almost every week, which is very satisfying, especially for those of us directly working on the site.

So, shop away everyone!

Here to serve y'all,
- Rob

Regarding response time and uptime, this is our highest priority and we are following a number of leads.

The good news: When the site is running well, it's speedelicious!

The bad news: The site still has bad days. And the first page you go to commonly seems to take 5 or 10 seconds too long.

Rest assured, we will eventually nip this in the bud.

First, we added some functionality to allow you to get shipping and handling on the shopping cart page.

To get it to show up, click "Proceed to Checkout" and select or create your shipping address.

That will take you to the Payment Method page. You don't need to enter a payment method to see the shipping any more. Just click on either "Shopping Cart" link at the top of the page and it will take you back to the cart with the shipping and handling visible.

Hurray! : )

Also, I've created higher resolution versions of the downloads for issues 118-121 in case you want to blow them up. All future supplements will be available in low (150dpi) and high(300dpi) resolution formats.

The new hi-res download are now available at:

I liken Wil to the role that Liv Tyler played in Lord of the Rings. I hated that she was there, but at the same time, her presence was beneficial to the movie. Slapping her stupid picture on the poster, and adding a bunch of irrelevant stuff that wasn't in the books, probably DID help those movies make a more substantial profit.

Hey, we all might have had our doubts before the movies came out, but I thought she was excellent! And most of the material *was* in the books, even if it was in the appendix. : )

If we want to talk about space, let's talk about the full page advetisements. I just grabbed a recent issue and counted 22.5 full pages of ads. That's okay, and makes alot of sense.

Indeed, ads are why we all have a magazine to read!

But 7 of those were for past issues of Dungeon and Dragon and for the Paizo website.

Keen observation. To be clear, we *added* 8 pages to the magazine to make room for the paizo ads. In other words, the paizo ads do not take the place of content.

best regards,
rob

That's too funny. I'm tempted to order the thing.

Please do! : )

So how about it, Dungeon? Any chance of a rewrite of this one for v.3.5?

I suggest that someone submit a proposal to write the adventure.

I've often been tempted to create a D&D adventure based on The Eater's of the Dead/13th Warrior version of Beowulf. Do you think this article would help with that?

I absolutely loved Eaters of the Dead. Great stuff, albeit a drastic retelling.

The article in 329 deals with the traditional versions of the legend. Stats for Grendel, his mother, and the Firedrake, as well as Beowulf himself. Since none of those things, with the possible exception of Beowulf himself, appear in literal form in Eaters of the Dead, I don't think the article is relevant.

If I were to turn Eaters of the Dead into a D&D adventure, I'd probably translate the Neanderthals into a cultish tribe of Bugbear raiders.

Check this out!

Baba Yaga/Chicken-Legged Hut Plush

Delightfully weird, huh?

I speak the truth! Can somebody else confirm that those avatar images were the only ones we had to choose from at first?

Quite true. Gary and I personally dig Kyle's style, so we started the avatar image selection with a collection of his kid monsters.

- rob

I hope you folks get what i mean, 'cause my english is not the best.

Au contraire! Your English is excellent.

A solution you can use right now is to use the Search box here on paizo.com.

It will search the descriptions of the products, which for all recent issues is essentially a table of contents.

Hope that helps.

Sounds like you mean non-d20 roleplaying games?

Feel free to start threads on other roleplaying systems.

If it's popular enough, we'll consider adding a new forum.

Check out our new forum for finding gamers at:
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/dnd/connection

Well, our troubles persist. Bunch of downtime overnight.

Some day we'll have this kicked.

: [
- rob

I always had the vision that, with players like these, there'd be more serious roleplaying...:)

I always feel that folks who are deeply interested in the role-playing aspect and are not satisfied by the typical gaming experience should seriously consider getting involved in theatre. Or even improvisational theatre.

There are whole worlds to explore out there. : )

cheers!
- rob

By popular demand, we have opened up these new forums for your enjoyment.

Have at it!

Yeah, at the risk of being sycophantic about it, I think that the art direction has been absolutely wonderful and it continues to improve! Although, I have to say the Githyanki love-fest from Dungeon #100 and the sister issue of Dragon may be just about my favorite of all time!

I have really been pretty blamed happy with the whole magazine for the last several issues! I think Paizo is doing an exceedingly good job.

We're blushing!

Under Command: scrap the feature already. Few people who play D&D are going to use miniatures the way they're priced now. If they're into miniatures, they're more likely to buy a dedicated miniatures mag, not Dragon.

Is that really what you meant to say? Actually, most D&D players use minis and the pricing (and time-savings) of the pre-painted D&D minis is one of the strongest selling points.

Whether those people also play the D&D Minis game is perhaps more in doubt.

I would just like to say that, as a parent, I want my kids to be exposed to things that are beautiful. Dragon 329 is a beautiful cover and doesn't bother me at all.

While I have found previous covers of both Dragon and Dungeon in poor taste and over the line, Dragon 329 is definitely not one of them.

Yucky: Dragon 306, Dungeon 107, Dungeon 98
Yummy: Dragon 329

Why? I don't know... subjectivity?

FYI, we've got product review functionality live on the site now.

Want to post your rating of Dragon 329? Go to the product page and add a review!

We've had some downtime this week.

A few hours this morning and yesterday morning as well.

Our apologies.

The good news is that we think we've made some break-throughs in identifying the source of some of our difficulties. Time will tell.

: ]
- rob

September, possibly October, 1977.

Eechy, 1st level Gnome Illusionist.

Random encounter with a red dragon flying overhead. Might even have been his first encounter.

An ill-advised attempt to attack it with an illusion gave away my location and I became scavenger food, well-done.

I immediately rolled a new character, also named Eechy, but this time a fighter. Str 17 Int 10 Wis 10 Con 11 Dex 12 Cha 10

I was six.