I am planning on flying to PaizoCon from the sunny Bahamas this year, and I am a little bit concerned about meeting the PFS criteria of having physical copies or watermarked PDFs of the novels in order to use the associated chronicle sheets. I am packing for a month, so I am a little reluctant to throw four or five paperbacks that I've already read into an already heavy bag. And I'm even more reluctant to purchase PDFs of books I've already read.
Does anyone have any advice in this area? Do I need to just forget using those chronicle sheets at this event?
I would definitely pay $1.99 apiece for apps that were based on the Critical Hits, Critical Fumble, and Plot Twist decks. I would probably pay $2.99. I don't think I would pay over $5.
In reviewing Silent Tide for tomorrow's game, I noticed a pretty stark difference between the way Grandmaster Torch is presented in ye olde venerable Silent Tide and the last of the First Steps module. In the former, he's presented as a no-nonsense, quid pro quo underworld information broker. In the latter, he's presented as the head of a group of benevolent watchdogs that seem to be Golarion's version of Anonymous. I've been trying to come up with some ways to make the difference a little less jarring, particularly for the player who instantly and enthusiastically embraced the Shadow Lodge after that encounter last week.
(I prefer the way ol' G-Pain was portrayed in Season 0, but I didn't start the thread to editorialize.)
In reviewing the messageboards, I found two people who'd made suggestions about this issue.
Matthew Morris wrote:
I decided that some Pathfinders had been abandoned by the Society during the original invasion, the Lodge needed the skull to try a hail mary 'speak with dead' to see if they knew the Pathfinder's remains.
This is good. I like this. However, I am reluctant to use it because it adds story to another author's adventure - something I do all the time in home play, but not in "living style" campaigns.
Nicholas Gray wrote:
(edited for length) You can still have him in charge of the Shadow Lodge. You just have him present it as being loyal to the Society and wanting what is best of the individual Pathfinder agents. Going with the general fluff you find in the Field Guide.
You can present the Shadow Lodge agents the PCs have to deal with in Season 1 & 2 as rogue and rebel agents as well as outsiders trying to corrupt Torch’s vision and mission for the Shadow Lodge. ...Torch is not wild about this separatist faction of Shadow Lodge agents destroying everything he had built...
While clever, it is more complex than the previous. And far-reaching. Not only does it add story to many author's adventures, it also a campaign story arc. This would be a great idea for a home game, but not for Society play.
I was personally leaning toward having Torch warmly (heh, heh) greet and congratulate the PCs, ask them to open the safes as a favor to him, and provide the needed information regardless of whether or not they are successful. If they are unsuccessful, or refuse, their rewards would be adjusted accordingly. That seems to me to be the best way to keep the big picture, the world of the Pathfinder, consistent for the players with the smallest impact on Michael Kortes' most excellent adventure.
What do you guys think? Suggestions? Ideas? Comments?
In response to the title: After freelancing a couple of times, it is my understanding that most RPG publishers expect the author to do the play-testing. That is part of what you're being paid for. Err, part of for what you're being paid. Err, part of your job.
Sigh.
So, maybe the better question is, "Does Paizo actually require their AP's to be play tested?"
:Specific overrides general" is a concept familiar to people who frequent gaming message boards. In an introductory scenario, I don't believe you should assume that the GM or players are familiar with such conventions. It could be clarified by only a minor change in the wording.
The convention in Pathfinder adventures -- and it is a good one -- is that they include stat blocks for creatures that appear in supplements other than the Bestiary, while Bestiary creatures get page numbers. It seems to be that it would be a logical extension of this convention to include rules that do not appear in the Core Rulebook. It would make even more sense in an introductory adventure. The rules for Haunts appear in the Advanced Player's Guide (and in Skinsaw Murders). And, yes, the room description does have a note about the Haunt going on initiative 10 in the surprise round (which is standard for a Haunt), but that reminder does no good if the GM doesn't know how a Haunt works.
Nickademus42 wrote:
It didn't specifically say it in this one...
But it's an intro adventure. Shouldn't it?
Nickademus42 wrote:
Also, there are some other parts to their personalities that are supposed to shine through... (edit) Colson Madris is arrogant and pompous but he honestly cares about what he believes in and honestly cares about the PCs safety. Aaqir al'Hakam may be manipulative and legalistic but his is still proper and civil, giving the impression of being very knowledgeable (he IS a diviner after all).
Beautifully said. I wish this was in the adventure. But it's not.
I ran a playtest of To Delve the Dungeon Deep tonight. It's a good little adventure. I particularly enjoyed the part about the huckster skulk prophet. However, I had difficulty with two portions of the module.
1. The first was the Suicide Well in Area 12. In the text for the room, it states that "...any creature that [looks down into the well] is subject to a suggestion that urges it to throw itself into the hole." However, the suggestion spell text states that "asking the creature to do some obviously harmful act automatically negates the effect of the spell." This is confusing. The wording should probably be changed. How would/did you handle this apparent contradiction?
(Also, because this is an introductory scenario, and the Haunt rules are found in the Advanced Player's Guide, they would make a good appendix -- with a note in the room description referring the GM to it. It's not clear that players are supposed to enter initiative when someone looks down the well unless you have the Haunt rules at hand.)
2. The second issue was regarding how I perceived two of the three factions introduced in this scenario were presented. Amara Li of the Lantern Lodge was a friendly, generous person. But Major Colson Madris of the Andoran faction was described as ostentatious and pompous, and dropped a mild insult on the party. And the brusque exchange with Trade Prince Aaqir al’Hakam (Qadira) made my players decide to only take him one of the many trade agreements they found in the structure.
This seems to me to be inconsistent with the stated purpose for the First Steps adventures. I am all for colorful characters, but I had to do some improvising in order to feel that I had communicated the aims and objectives of the factions involved. Am I making much ado about nothing?
How I Prepare An Adventure Under Ideal Circumstances
This is a riff on a workshop I attended while in high school in 1983 called, "How To Read A Textbook."
Evening One
1) Skim quickly through the entire adventure. Read all the headings and look at all the illustrations, taking time to look over the maps. Allow myself to stop anywhere that grabs my attention, but don't read more than a few sentences.
2) Go through the entire adventure reading the first sentence of every paragraph AND all the words that are in bold. Allow myself to stop anywhere that grabs my attention, but don't read more than a few sentences.
3) Check the forums for any GM discussions about the adventure.
Evening Two
4) Read all of the adventure. If I have printed out the PDF, I do the following during the main read-through: a) Underline the most important sentence of each paragraph. b) Highlight all the Skill checks with green. c) Highlight what the PCs need to know after the encounter or conversation with yellow. d) Write down on a legal pad any spells or combat rules I don't know or can't remember.
Evening Three
5) Skim through the adventure. Make index cards for all the major NPCs. Make a couple of notes about their appearance and location. Write down three things they might say during a psychotherapy session with their analyst. Work the backstory into a couple of the sentences. (With Burnt Offerings, I did this with a database because of the large number of NPCs. Instead of writing three things, I copied and pasted pertinent information about each NPC as I came across it from the PDF into the database.)
Evening Four
6) Pre-draw any complicated maps (like the Sandpoint Glassworks) on the large presentation board size graph paper with 1" squares that is available at most office supply stores.
7) Make index cards for the combat encounters. I still use the free ones The Game Mechanics made for D&D 3.5 if I have access to a printer and card stock.
--OR--
6) Prepare maps and tokens for VTT software.
Evening or Morning Before The Game
8) Skim the adventure and the NPC cards, reading what I have underlined and highlighted.
9) Review the spells and rules I listed on the legal pad at a website like d20pfsrd.org. Make brief notes on the pad as needed.
The first combat: I threw in an extra dire rat but it was still over before the first round had finished.
Second combat: The barbarian -- second in initiative order -- raged and scored a crit with a scythe (x4) in the first round and did 34 points of damage. Even with DR, way more than enough to one-shot him.
We're now through two combats and there was one player who hadn't rolled a die in combat.
The third combat was about right for 6 PCs. Everybody got to play. It lasted five rounds.
So, if I were running this in a home game for six PCs, I might throw in two more dire rats and double the imp's hit points.
I won't argue with Toz or Digitalelf, who both can back up their information with print references. However, I seem to recall a Dragon Magazine from years ago with a letter or column from someone who had pinned down Gary at a con and asked him, and his reply was "whichever you prefer."
I am planning on running the First Steps series at a local store, and am thinking about using MapTool on my laptop's screen instead of using a mat.
Are the maps from those adventures available without the location keys and text? If not, has anyone photoshopped the existing maps? Recreated them in another program for use with a virtual tabletop?
This is the inaugural Pathfinder Society event for the city of Nassau and New Providence Island. We'll take some time for character creation at the beginning of the session, and we'll have some pregenerated characters for those who'd like to try out the great stories the PFS without committing themselves to one type of character yet.
We're running introductory scenario In Service To Lore by Adam Daigle. Here's the blurb:
In your first mission as a Pathfinder agent, the head of the Grand Lodge sends you on a number of missions throughout the metropolis of Absalom, pitting you against traps,thieves, and even an unruly devil, all in the pursuit of knowledge.
Our host is The C.A.G.E. Club off Soldier Rd. just south of Marathon Mall. The store contact is Stan at (242) 393-4652 or admin@thecageclub.com. The store website is here. You can contact me (Ken) at saint dot meerkat at gmail dot com.
The club customarily charges a modest $1/day fee for non-members. During the introductory sessions, I will pay fees for any non-members that want to come out and try PFS.
We'll try to kick off the adventure around 1PM. I will be there at noon to help with character creation and to answer any questions about Pathfinder Society play.
I'll run games, bring dice, maps and mods and leave them for your to use and buy all the drinks for a week if you find me a nice place to stay in January :)
It gets cold here in New York.
Baron, I have a guest bedroom.
Mike, I'm on a teacher's salary. I had to swim over from Miami. :)
Pathfinder Society play will begin in Nassau, The Bahamas with a special holiday premiere session on Sunday, December 18th at 1PM. We'll be playing at The C.A.G.E. Club off Soldier Road near Marathon Mall.
We will begin regular weekly play on Sunday, January 8th at 1PM.
The contact at the store is Stan: (242) 393-4652. The store's website is C.A.G.E. Club
You can contact me (Ken Austin) here or at saint dot meerkat at gmail dot com.
More information will follow.
I'm very excited to be a part of launching PFS down here. Some of you may remember me being involved in PFS in the Knoxville, Tennessee; and convention play around the southern US. I have obviously relocated, and am looking forward to resuming my role as Paizo evangelist here in this beautiful new setting.
I recently relocated to Nassau, and am interested in running or playing in a Pathfinder or Pathfinder Society game. My new job starts in a couple of weeks, and after that I anticipate being available any weeknight and any time on the weekends.
I've percolated this in my noggin for the last couple of days, and I think to have its broadest appeal...don't use 3D.
Montvalve wrote:
Lilith is right in this... there are already many ways of playing online... what we would benefit would be in a way of making that experience richer.
VoodooMike wrote:
Certainly once you lose the insistance on 3D you're entering the realm of realistic and timely.
Great observations.
Downloadable or streaming video from authors or publishers that enhanced or replaced boxed text, that established mood or setting while DMs draw on the mat, or that related historical or recent events. A la carte, Paizo-style subscriptions, free web enhancements.
Can't you imagine one of the rooms at Paizo-con being set up for people to do videos of some of the major PFS NPCs? Or in-character introductions that are available online for viewing? And voting for?
VoodooMike wrote:
Rather, what I envision anyway, is an online system that creates something of a "PnP MMO" - the gaming is all real roleplay with a human DM and human players and such, but it is done as organized play facilitated by a persistent online system.
<snip>
Likewise, it opens the door to having a player-influenced and developed campaign setting.
THIS! This is EXACTLY what I want.
You are well down the road to winning the P-Prize. Unfortunately, you are also the one that was going to have to fund the P-Prize. So go ahead and write the check to yourself, add it to your resume, and list me as the contact.
VoodooMike wrote:
From an implementation standpoint, that isn't all that grandiose.
That is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me. :)
I used Fractal Mapper and my job website to do #1 when I was running a lot of Blackmoor episodes. I just saved the map to the folder on the server and had players refresh. That was really easy.
These days...no job/no server.
hogarth wrote:
I've never heard of it, but I'll have to try it out. From what I just read about it, it sounds better than the two solutions I've seen tried for PbP/PbEM games:
1) make a map (via Maptools or whatever), move tokens around on map, export as a .jpg, then upload it to a web site --> good looking results, but involves a bunch of steps and you end up with a static picture
2) use a Google Spreadsheet as a map grid, with lines drawn on top to represent walls and cell values indicating tokens --> ugly results, but simple and easy to change
I stumbled across what had to be the meanest, angriest game forum board ever last night.
I got there via a [spoiler="better than" Google search.](If there's something you like a lot, like miniatures, Google "better than reaper miniatures. Lots of fun. Try "better than 4E" "better than WoW" and you'll see what I mean. Thanks, Lifehacker.com![/spoiler]
In one thread, one guy had copied and pasted examples of comments allegedly made by a game designer over an extended period of time that the poster believed proved that the designer was incompetent, arrogant, etc.
I'd never heard of that board before last night, and I will never go back. I'll certainly not mention it by name.
I like how you think as well, but I worry about ambition.
Thank you.
We're brainstorming here. This is the phase where being overambitious is okay.
Evil Lincoln wrote:
If a game company insists on overreaching then they will create vaporware.
But the P-Prize wouldn't pay off until the experience was delivered. It doesn't have to be an existing company or IP we're talking about here.
We're in the disillusionment phase of the "hype cycle" regarding BOTH 3d virtual environments AND an eventual WotC online TT experience. Right now, anyone who tries to tell before they show is going to get a lot of ridicule.
AND -- regarding leasing an expensive graphics engine --
In February, the New Media Consortium polled educators about their preferred platform for producing virtual experiences for their students. Here are some company/product names I grabbed from the resulting article.
3DXplorer, ActiveWorlds, Blue Mars, IBM Sametime, Metaplace, Multiverse, Open Sim, Proton Media, Second Life, Teleplace, Vastpark, Web.Alive, Wonderland, Unity Game Development Tool, Exit Reality, Oberin
Is anybody using/misusing/abusing any of these sites for gaming/storytelling/roleplaying?
I'm on my way home from work, and I had mustered by website or mobile app to play a PFS adventure tonight, but I'm late. I get home and the session has already started so I instead walk my avi to the Absalom city square- the OOC chat area.
A system wide announcement pops up. Is anyone available to play NPC's in the Magnimar area tonight? I click the yes button - suddenly I'm where I need to be and the "director" is talking to me by private voice chat telling me that two groups are adventuring there tonight. She sends me the blurbs for the NPCs I'm responsible for.
One of the groups is playing traditional initiative based combat, where the mechanics and dice rolling are all handled through a tabletop like interface. I am trash talking until the director messages me and reminds me I'm not following the instructions in the blurb. I was supposed to run away when I got to 40 hp. Oops. No problem, she says.
Another group is trying the new silent combat interface where the dice rolling and game mechanics are all behind the scenes. This is going great until in the middle of the combat someone uses diplomacy to shift my attitude to friendly, and I crash and have to log back in. Gary mentioned that part was still a little buggy.
After a couple of hours of that, I've earned back the two karma points I lost for not showing up for an adventure I mustered and/or paid for.
I saw in the Paizo blog that Crystal was going to have an instance open this evening for some in character stuff related to her ongoing Diamond Throne game. So, I go back to Absalom, stop by a shop operated by Malhavoc and buy a Litorian avatar. Crystal is allowing lurkers in her instance, so I walk around and listen while they're all in there.
A few weeks later I see in the Magnimar lore wiki that one of the NPCs I played has its own entry. I add a little bit to it so that next time someone plays that character they'll know what happened the night I played it, but Josh deletes it because only people with ten karma or more are able to add to the lore wiki. Technically, I only had eight karma when I role played that because I missed the muster.
I wouldn't restrict the vision at this point. "website" or "wiki" or "communal" seem limiting at this point in my vision, because I want something that doesn't currently exist to be the result of my challenge.
Remember the thrum of excitement we felt when Google Wave came along? We were all *so* ready for the next thing. And that wasn't it.
Maybe it would be a for-profit that charged small groups of players for a night of online adventuring. Maybe it would be an evolution of Wolfgang's OD model, where patrons would get to make in-world design decisions for an online experience -- or even pay to play their NPC! Wouldn't that change the whole "let me tell you about my character" joke?
I think, for the purposes of this discussion, we wouldn't even talk about new versions of things that already exist.
That's no coincidence because I considered mentioning you in my first post.
You've done a lot of community work -- for instance, I used your drawings for my Tsuto's Journal handout. What if those drawings were in a virtual world, in a virtual representation of that journal? Instead the link to that part of your dA site is mouldering in a stale thread.
A cash award given to a creator or team who can produce in a persistent online 3D environment a participatory immersive story experience inspired by the PFSRD and the game that inspired it.
If you didn't grin when you read that, you need to check your pulse.
Persistent virtual spaces like Second Life and the late There.com always seemed to me to have a lot of potential for the extension of a campaign setting. Why haven't they been more widely employed by authors, publishers, and homebrew GM's?
I was stoked when Never Winter Nights, with its DM tools for creating your own online adventuring space, was announced. And the sheer number of people who turned out their own reproductions of modules A1-4 in the months following its release tells me that I wasn't the only one. But it didn't take off.
Millions of people quest and do the XP grind that Poppa Gary and Uncle Dave popularized, shelling out $10/month or more to explore online worlds despite their lack of Vancian magic. Everquest and World of Warcraft have been the source of hundreds of hours of enjoyment for me. But my personal impact on those massively multiplayer worlds isn't profound, like is at my Thursday night Pathfinder table.
We are spending a lot of resources and energy on turning the monitor into our game table. And we've gotten pretty good at it. Fantasy Grounds, RPGTools, Map Tools, d20Pro, are getting better and easier to use. I enjoyed playing Living Greyhawk and Blackmoor online. Tough on the arse, but it beats eating a mod, right? Maybe it has been difficult to develop a thriving online TT RPG community because we are forcing a 1970's analog on potential participants. Most of us have a supercomputer in our hands at the tabletop now, but all we use it for is a high tech book bag and dice cup.
Why hasn't something intermediary arrived on the scene? Where is the online equivalent of the neighborhood haunted house, where everybody chipped in, decorated for a week, and let the whole community have a great time enjoying their efforts? One part True Dungeon, one part Pathfinder Society, one part Second Life, one part Dungeon A Day?
I challenge everyone and anyone reading this post -- authors, publishers, entrepreneurs, hobbyists -- to begin thinking of a way that I could learn about and participate in your stories and share with you my own in a totally new manner.
Let's take the participatory tabletop story telling and role playing game into the 21st century.
The main one I need is Decline of Glory. Everything else we can make photocopies of easily. If you can email me a copy, I would really appreciate it. I have it already saved on my computer at home, but that's over an hour away and I'm not going back there until after the tourney! I am at jasontroeder at yahoo. Thanks!
I don't have that one. I'm sorry. Maybe someone else will.
I've been having the same problem all night. And now I'm supposed to be running a PFS adventure in three hours. If I don't get it in the next hour, I'm screwed.
It was very important to Dustin Clingman, who oversaw a lot of the products, that Dave Arneson have a huge presence in this book. The introduction states that "Dave's fingerprints are everywhere in a book like this..." and I believe it.
It's softcover, black and white, 215 pp., twelve chapters and two appendices, easy to read layout, no index. Some of everything -- races, classes, prestige classes, spells, feats, skills, and lots of delicious fluff (organizations, backgrounds, current political situation, etc.).
If you are looking for stuff that is a direct pull from Dave's personal campaign, I would make this book my third purchase -- after "The Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor" and "Dave Arneson's Blackmoor (d20).
If you're looking for Dave flavored stuff you can throw in your Pathfinder or 3.5 game RIGHT NOW, I would make this my first purchase.
The Spellplague was intended to completely destroy my interest in older Forgotten Realms products (eBay and PDFs) so that they wouldn't take away from the new products' revenue stream.
I have recently made the switch to nearly paperless gaming.
<snip>
That'll tide me over until they work out all of the kinks with the iPad.
I think I would be farther down the line toward paperless gaming if more companies published their PDF's like Super Genius Games -- landscape instead of portrait. That makes a HUGE difference to me.
Bestiary and Core Rulebook are holding up fine so far. I have mostly used the PDFs for Gods and Magic and Campaign Setting -- so they haven't been off my shelf much.
The gaming books I've had the most trouble with as far as binding goes have been the Arcanis books from Paradigm. It was almost embarrassing to sit around a Living Arcanis table back when that campaign was going strong -- pages flying everywhere. I haven't used my Witchhunter book enough to know how well it's going to hold up.
Oh, my Shadowrun 20th Anniversary book is holding up great, but it's upside down. When you open the front cover, you see the back page upside down. I am keeping it, because I will never get it mixed up with anyone else's! I think it's cool!
If Paizo was going to look to existing IP outside Golarian, I'm sure that they would be looking at universes that a pulp genre feel or cult fan following like Green Ronin's Thieves World and Black Company; Studio 2's Solomon Kane, and TSR's Lankhmar -- all of which are books I paid full price for as soon as they were released.
Charles R. Saunder's Alternate Africa stories? Listen to what reviewer/author Charles de Lint says about these:
Charles de Lint wrote:
...characters are disenfranchised from their birth community and forced to wander in exile—which allows for many and varied adventures—but Dossouye's story draws more heavily on traditional African mythology than the heroic fantasy wizards and monsters that Imaro often confronts.
<snip>
Mind you, I think of Saunders's work as historical adventure fantasy because the stories are set in a meticulously researched real historical background, but there is magic. Didn't know that Africa had cities and a widespread civilization in the long ago? Neither did I until I read Saunders's work and then went back and followed the path of some of his research. It's utterly fascinating stuff, but more to the point, Saunders writes an adventure story that'll keep you on the edge of the seat from the first page.
(Is Erik Mona looking at his collection and nodding knowingly? Or is he scrambling for aLibris and abebooks?)
Buckell's Nanagada? This would be awesome in all kinds of ways.
Silverberg's Majipoor?
Novik's Temeraire?
Erickson's Malazan?
Norton's Witch World?
Any of the C.L. Moore/Leigh Brackett/Kuttner stuff?
On the other hand, I would not be interested in licensed IP for some current high profile YA material (Percy Jackson? Eragon? Twilight?) Some people might, but not me.
I sure would not be interested in Paizo publishing another fantasy setting, but I'd love to see a sci-fi setting receive the Paizo treatment.
I certainly view Paizo as, to borrow from someone's observation about Kobold Quarterly, the "spiritual successor" to TSR.
A Paizo-ed (or Super Genius Games-ed) PF take on Gamma World would fit and be appreciated by us Paizo regulars, I believe.
I *love* Spelljammer. (One of my Rise of the Runelord players is, unbeknown to him, wearing a helm right now.) But a PF analog might not be a good idea currently.
From page 21 of the Guide to PFS Organized Play, "If your character has any ranks in a Craft, Perform, or Profession skill, he may choose one of those skills and make one roll at the end of every scenario."
In PRPG taking 10 is the equivalent of making a roll.
Is it a swift action or a free action? Does it provoke? If it's a Performance check, can you use Diplomacy to change the audience's attitude to Friendly for a circumstance bonus to your roll? If you roll a natural one on the skill check, does that give you a penalty to the next perform check you make in the same town? Can you change the name of your band and make a bluff check to attempt to remove that penalty?
Are there any flip-mats or map packs suitable for use with this adventure? I really enjoyed using the flip mats I already owned with the first adventure in this series.
Posts
