Steve Geddes's page

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I don't think he meant the people who buy them and keep them packaged as some kind of investment. I think he meant people who currently buy lots of randomised figures or who haunt the various singles markets/auction sites to get the full set.

If it turns out that's not worth the effort, it might lead to customer resentment but it would definitely lead to lower sales of the "standard" sets.

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What really amuses me about this thread is the implication that locking a thread ends a discussion. Oh no! A monk thread was locked! Know what that means? It means no one can ever talk about monks again!

We live in hope..

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The baby (of carefully considered opinions) gets thrown out with the bath water (of thread locking and deletions).

Not really. The carefully considered opinions are still there. You just have to start a new thread if you want to respond to them. That's not actually very hard - copy and paste the post you want to reply to and then start a new thread by quoting that as your starting point.

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Your ire at that added hassle should be directed at those who continue to flout the rules (those threads nearly always receive warning before they are locked) rather than towards those who enforce them.

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To persuade you of what? That other people enjoy different things than you? Nobody is trying to claim that you should enjoy it.

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Offending people is easy, especially on the internet.

Closing thread is easy (the mods do it a lot).

Shutting down discussions is easy.

Should it be done? I don't think so.

A flag? Oh no! People got offended by contrary views and disagreement. What an utter, common whine (as a few comedians have pointed out).

More on locked threads soon, when I find another good discussion between posters shut down because somebody got offended.

Obviously (as a vociferous poster on the other side of that discussion) I was interested in it continuing. However, it was clearly going in circles - something which doesn't bug me but is apparently unpopular. I don't really see why it matters if two people want to go on and on rehashing something, but if its against the rules, it's against the rules.

Having said that, I don't think it's fair to say they close threads "a lot", nor that the reason is that "someone got offended".

It's worth remembering that message boards are not public forums and they're not democracies.

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3.5 Loyalist wrote:

Or you can ignore the lesson.

If the teacher were respectful, he might actually have something worth learning.

Off to bed gentlemen, try not to get the thread locked.

Hopefully it won't get locked. It's not particularly unpleasant. Granted, it's going in circles, but there's nothing inherently wrong with rehashing the same points is there? People can read something else if they get bored...

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If you fail so completely to describe a simple event, I can't tell you how to run your games, I can only help you, and indicate where your weaknesses assuredly lie.

I've got to run a game soon (yay!), but if I could make some suggestions it would be to try and add more to your games, description wise. Frame it, but also get into the details. This doesn't all have to be about blood, smell can be a new detail to bring into your games, how does something smell when they enter, a cave, a tunnel, how does a combat smell at the end?

There are other areas. Are their hearts racing, are they half dead, what, have, they, done. This doesn't have to take all night, just a bit more description, dally with the gritty and what their senses tell them, and you will be set to improve a lot.

Or you can ignore the lesson.

If they have never drank apple juice, and you have never given them apple juice, how do you know they won't like the apple juice you give them?

Another mistake you're often making is to assume we haven't tried it the way you're advocating. As teenagers our group played much more explicitly violent than we do now. We don't take a minimalist approach to gore because we haven't thought of it but because we don't enjoy it (any longer).

You will continue to miss the point until you include the participants' preferences in your arguments.

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3.5 Loyalist wrote:

That is why you failed.

And you say you aren't telling us how to run our games.

None of my players care about any of that.

Don't you know? That's not relevant to how DMing "should" be done.

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kmal2t wrote:

It's wrong to point out what people are doing is possibly inconsistent to make them reconsider their viewpoint?

I guess people should always stick to exactly what they believe under the dogma of "my fun" and never consider how logical or reasonable something is.

Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with pointing out inconsistencies either, and indicating where the game could be made better, alongside being made a lot more realistic.

Is having an opinion bad? I don't think so.

Your claim that my game will be better if I use explicit gore is having an opinion about what I like (and claiming that I'm mistaken to believe otherwise). That is bad, yes.

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... play your games in the actual fantasy worlds....

:D

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I agree..That is nerdy. :p

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Lisa Stevens.

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I prefer as little gloss as possible inside books, so I for one hope it continues.

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Yora wrote:

Fabius Maximus wrote:

@Yora: If you want to buy PDFs, use DriveThruRPG.com. They accept Paypal. For print products, you can only use Amazon.de (if you're lucky and they have the product), or ask your local gaming store if they can order it. That is very expensive, though. However, shipping costs from the US can be very high, too, depending on the product you order.

I know, and I use them a lot. But Paizo does not sell their pdfs there.

@TriOmega: Didn't get a mail, but your forum message. And replied.

Out of curiosity, how do people in Europe mainly pay for things online without a credit card or debit bank card? Is Payapal the primary method?

I think they put it on Germany's credit card.

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An Urban AP launching next GenCon - with a Hardcover Absalom book as a "special release" and "Ultimate City Campaigns" as the rulebook release would be awesome.

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Sean this is my equal favorite hardcover I've ever bought from Paizo (tying with the RotRLAE Collector's Edition). For what it's worth, this:

And honestly, I think your topic and the VOP/gearless topic are related... and are probably better discussed in a book whose purpose is to analyze, discuss, and advise about campaigns that greatly skew from the default expectations of a Pathfinder campaign—wealth by level, availability of magic items, divorcing PC reliance on magic items, preponderance of non-human intelligent monsters in the campaign, spreading out leveling over a longer chronological period, and so on.

sounds awesome. I suspect I'm in a minority in preferring less rules to more, but I really liked the way Ultimate Campaign has expanded the rules sideways rather than higher (if that makes sense). More rulebooks with that sort of focus would be a development I would welcome.

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Free form is great, but rules provide a rich soil of inspiration.

This is ultimately a matter of preference. Although you're probably correct when it comes to most fans of PF, it works the opposite for me. I never do anything creative if we try to play PF "by the book" because there's rules, tables and subsystems for just about everything - so I look through those to see how it's supposed to work.

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In a game with very little in the way of rules (1st edition AD&D or Swords and Wizardry being my favorites) I'm much more inclined to come up with something other than 'hit it with my sword'.

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The transitions document (which you can find here as a free download) does a great job of explaining the main differences between the Beginner Box rules and the Core Rules, in my opinion.

If they're new to roleplaying, I think the Beginner Box is a much less threatening introduction to the game, personally. The fact that the game has over five hundred pages of rules is something of a barrier I think - that you can 'learn the rules you need' as you go is a different mindset to most games.

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Steve Geddes wrote:

It was a one off celebration of paizo's anniversary, the launch of pathfinder, etcetera.

Here is the post from vic on the topic, in which he asks us to squash the idea. He has lots of other really thorough posts if you search his history for compilations or reprints.

Vic:

"Seriously, guys, please stop asking for other compilations. It's not going to happen, and I don't want people who don't read carefully thinking it's likely to happen.

One of the main reasons for not doing this one is that just having the notion out there that we *might* do this for other APs is harmful. I'd really appreciate it if everybody would help squash that idea whenever and wherever it is raised.

This is a unique circumstance."

Lol - in other words:

"Seriously guys, as paying customers and the very lifeblood of everything we do here at Paizo, stop asking for things you'd like to buy. "

Wow.

Not really. If you read all his posts on this topic, rather than just that snippet i quoted, it's more "Please keep giving us feedback. Please keep telling us what you want. But in this one, specific, very unique circumstance - please understand that we can't do it and that the mere presence of requests for it is a risk. Now that you know the answer and the reasons for it, we'd really like you to keep your enthusiasm in check. Otherwise people skimming the boards will think that we sometimes do these compilations as a matter of course, or that its likely to happen again eventually."

That comment was addressed to a bunch of us who'd been batting that specific idea around over a bunch of threads, it's not a statement of general policy regarding customer feedback pertaining to all their products.

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A gift card sub where the user set the amount to be bought and converted to credit each month would be great. (Even better if they could also select the day the transaction happened).

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I suspect their Playtest sessions are both more effective and efficient, as well.

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I think the issue in that case, is that for me it doesn't make sense for anyone to argue anything if they are assuming that they are in the wrong.

Basically, people argue because they think they're right.

One of my degrees included a large chunk of philosophy. It was essentially nothing but argument (and the non philosophy stuff was maths). My later academic study (accounting) included a bunch of law. Both of those involve the ability to argue positions you disagree with, so perhaps my perspective is unusual.

Nonetheless, one often sees people overly confident in their own position. A little self doubt is a good thing, in my view. It helps avoid the situation you often see where people continue to pursue an obviously lost argument.

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Gorbacz wrote:

Assuming_Control wrote:

Yeah, I was wrong on that, Turns out my GM has been using that spell wrong since 3.5 and I didn't look into until you pointed it out.

But hey, I didn't publish Prone Shooter, either.

Sure, no probs. But, that means designers are perfectly qualified to make the same mistakes that you do, eg. writing the original Prone Shooter. And those mistakes shouldn't really surprise or rile you, because you're making them yourself.

I can be rather acrimonious on forums, but I promise I'm not as riled up as I come across.

My issue is that Steve Geddes is saying that we should defer to the devs and basically assume we're wrong until proven right.

To be perfectly honest, I don't give half a d*nm about sheltering peoples egos from my opinons, and I resent essentially being told not to rock the boat.

Im not telling you not to rock the boat and it has nothing to do with egos. In fact, I specifically said that people who disagree with the developers should argue their case and challenge them. The admonition to assume you're most likely the one in the wrong is simple statistics - if the person you're arguing your hobby with does it for a living you're probably the one who has missed something.

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Ashiel wrote:

I said don't be foolish, which you kind of were acting foolish...

Ashiel wrote:

I said don't be foolish, which you kind of were acting foolish As for the nine year old thing, I never suggested that you lacked the comprehension of a nine year old. I said any nine year old could see the logical conclusion to a situation where one product isn't available versus another.

So basically what you are saying is that you did actually say he was foolish and had the comprehension of a 9 year old, you just don't think you should have to apologize for it, and he should stop being mad at you.

FWIW, Ashiel and I have pretty much worked out our misunderstanding via pm. I think it's fair to say we were having two different conversations.

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If there was something other than just being contrary and trying to muddy any sort honest conversation that you were getting at then I'm all ears. Otherwise I'm just going to leave this conversation alone. Getting hammered by other posters for nothing leaves a bad taste in the mouth - especially when you're just trying to converse about not only your hobby but your community.

Gee how would you have responded if I'd called you foolish or suggested you lacked the comprehension of a nine year old?

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Steve Geddes wrote:

Ashiel wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

Ashiel wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

He's better than he used to be now that he's doing it for money.

Practice makes perfect.

He's better than he would have been if he'd not gone into business.

That seems like a pretty unsubstantiated claim. How can you prove this? And is there a reason you're ignoring the part where I pointed out how they produced a book - as amateurs - that was at the time much better than the professional alternative?

It is an unsubstantiated claim. It's my opinion. (I was rewording it, since it seemed like you'd misunderstood my point).

I didn't address the follow up point because I have no idea if it was better. How did you determine that? The only objective measure seems to be sales.

Well let's see...

If you went to the WotC boards and asked about expansion material or Complete Psionics. 9/10 people on those boards would tell you to ignore it and get Hyperconscious and Untapped Potentil instead, citing it as better balanced, better written, and more useful, leading me to the conclusion that it was in fact better received by its audience.

The audience for RPG rules are people who play RPGs, not the hardcore ones who post on a forum. (Presuming your 9/10 statistic was accurate).

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"Lots of people on the internet agree with me" is not actually substantiation or we'd be outlawing vaccinations.

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sunbeam wrote:

I think another broad assumption by the 3e devs that seems to be carried over to Pathfinder is to overrate spontaneous casting.

PF did not overrate it. They were well aware of the wizard's power over the sorcerer, but part of the appeal and marketing plan was backward compatibility with 3.5, so they could only change so much if they wanted to bring the 3.5 crowd over. Some things they could have changed more, but it is hard to tell at times what they could and could not get away with.

This is another excellent point (and particularly pertinent to the OP). Backwards compatibility was a huge constraint faced by the designers.

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Steve Geddes wrote:

ciretose wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

In nearly every field, amateurs think they're better than they are. It's easy to maintain that confidence if you never have to produce something that actually gets tested in the market - you can just ignore a whole bunch of factors that actual game designers can't afford to.

What if...and this is purely hypothetical of course, an amateur produced a product for the market and found it did not sell, was poorly reviewed and frankly widely panned.

Wouldn't you think that would be a humbling enough experience to not continue telling the Devs they don't know what they are doing?

I guess. But they wouldn't be an amateur then. (Also, human nature being what it is, I suspect there'd be a certain amount of blaming "the mainstream", the marketing power of their competitors or just a general "I'm ahead of my time" vibe (or the similar "people just didn't get it...").

In my case I'm too busy with other stuff in my life to put a lot of effort into doing more than writing articles and the occasional gift. But I've seen other people who do great, great work who are still considered amateur. As Jeremy points out Dreamscarred began as nothing but a fan project (I remember those days as I loved to frequent the WotC boards). And the fans made a better sourcebook for psionics than the Complete Psionics could have ever hoped to have been.

He's better than he used to be now that he's doing it for money.

Creating a rule book is much more than creating rules. As an amateur you don't have to make the hard choices around space constraints, broad appeal and (crucially) deadlines.

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In nearly every field, amateurs think they're better than they are. It's easy to maintain that confidence if you never have to produce something that actually gets tested in the market - you can just ignore a whole bunch of factors that actual game designers can't afford to.

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Having settled on essentials as my preferred 4E system, I have a bunch of 4E books we no longer have any use for. If any of the regular 4E forum posters would like to fill out their collections, I'd be very happy to give them to you for nothing - I'll cover the cost of shipping too, although that's from Australia so might take some time... Here's what I am looking to give away:

Madness at Gardmore Abbey
Vor Rukoth
Hammerfast
The Slaying Stone (A really underappreciated 4E module, in my view)
Orcs of Stonefang Pass
Tomb of Horrors
Revenge of the Giants
Halls of Undermountain
The H1-E2 series of modules (E3 is already spoken for)
Tieflings
Dragonborn
Marauders of the Dune Sea
Khyber's Harvest (missing the dungeon tile)
The Planes Above
The Planes Below
Manual of the Planes
Dragonomicon:Chromatic
Dragonomican:Mettallic
"Silver Cover" Monster Manual (Errata'd maybe?)
"Silver Cover" Player's Handbook
"Silver Cover" Dungeon Master's Guide
Red Box
Elminster's Forgotten Realms
Heroes of Elemental Chaos
Heroes of the Feywild
Heroes of Shadow
Adventurer's Vault
Adventurer's Vault 2
Dragon Magazine Annual
Neverwinter Campaign Setting
Dark Sun Creature Catalog
Eberron Campaign Guide
Eberron Player's Guide
Dungeon Magazine Annual
Dungeon Delve
Player's Strategy Guide
Player's Handbook 2
Player's Handbook 3
Martial Power
Martial Power 2
Divine Power
Arcane Power (Cover is printed upside down relative to contents)
Primal Power
Psionic Power
Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide
Forgotten Realms Player's Handbook
I also have two copies of the PF Core Rulebook (4th Printing) and the Alternity: Dark Matter Campaign Setting, if they'd be of interest.

If there's anything there you'd like, please send me a pm over the next week or so (I'll post here once they're all spoken for) and I'll try and divvy them up in a roughly fair way (feel free to prioritise your list if there's one or two that you really want).

If there's more than one person wanting a specific book, it'll be decided partly on a 'first come, first served' bases but also pretty heavily skewed towards those people I recognise from posting on the 4E forum - kind of a 'thanks for teaching me how it works' thing.

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The occasional shipping efficiency is not really something you can actively manage, it will just happen from time to time:

Suppose your monthly subscription is $60 per month (including shipping) and some extreme situation happens - like January and February shipments are pushed back into March or something. When you know that's on the cards, you buy yourself a gift card for $60 at the usual time in January (but receive nothing). Again, you buy yourself another gift card for $60 in February (but receive nothinig). Then three months worth of product get shipped to you in March - they use up the $120 worth of credit and charge the remainder to your card - the worst case scenario being another $60 charge at the usual time.

Because you are now getting a larger shipment you can save money either through the $10 discount to shipping or just through efficiencies of getting a large package rather than three smaller packages. In the worst case scenario they ship you three packages for $60 each and you're no worse off.

The end result is that your card gets pinged $60 on the exact day of the month you specify. The only downside is the delay in delivery and there is a slight possibility of an upside in shipping savings (although as I mentioned, it's not one you can really plan to take advantage of).

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Yeah, the snowpocalypse followed by the RotRL miniatures cases combined with the RotRLAE and the GenCon rush is what had me smoothing out my payments last year. Provided you don't mind paying for things in advance, it really solves the cashflow problem well.

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One way to solve the cash flow issues this causes is to buy yourself a gift certificate each month and set your preferences such that credit is allocated to your subscription payments. If you do that, you actually end up saving money when the schedule slips (via combined shipping and the occasional efficiencies/discounts that generates).

It does mean you're paying for stuff in advance, but your cash flow can be managed perfectly - your regular amount goes onto your credit card every month exactly when you want it to.

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I can sympathize. Capstones are shiny.

Personally, I dont think there's anything wrong with just granting the capstone ability at whatever you think is likely to be the final level of the campaign.

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It's kind of "overpowered" in the sense that those sixteenth level characters are better than other sixteenth level characters, but from an internal consistency sense it doesnt make much difference and gets you a chance to use those neat gadgets you've had your eye on for all those levels.

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I want room to go beyond just this one facet of identities.

Why? Redheads aren't feeling excluded - why go out of the way to include them?

All categories aren't equal - the experience of different groups is different.

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It's come up from time to time, but hasn't been enthusiastically received (by either fans or staff, really).

One problem is they try to keep the cards largely system neutral (although that isn't a hard and fast rule), another is no doubt the size of some PF stat blocks - it may well be a real challenge to fit everything on the back.

FWIW, I'd grab these in a heartbeat. My preference though would be for them to be bigger (tarot sized) and to have escalating knowledge check results - I find it hard to judge what to say when a player attempts a knowledge check (plus keep forgetting which is the applicable skill).

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Steve Geddes wrote:

In a world where the physics can be affected by one's belief it does - who says belief isnt another factor of energy manipulation? I understand it doesnt fit your idea of magic, but wiggling one's fingers and making blocks of stone appear is already not making sense. If such mystical blocks of stone dont hurt disbelievers that's just another feature of this silly world's physics.

It makes perfect sense in the context of the world it exists in, just as the weird evolution presented in X-men makes sense in the context of that universe.

Operating under the premise that "It's not our world, so anything I feel like goes" makes for bad writing and bad gaming.

I can't speak to writing, but it doesnt make bad gaming in my experience.

The alternate world I'm suggesting has, as part of the context, the feature that disbelieving in magic makes you immune to it.

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Maybe I'm misunderstanding the antipathy towards disbelief as a defense to magic. But it seems odd to me to say that disbelief in magic granting immunity is silly - in a world with magic, couldnt it be just as sensible to say that genuine disbelief makes you immune?

Conceptions of magic arent distinguished by whether they're silly/sensible, in my view. Perhaps you think it's mechanically unbalancing or not consistent with how you picture magic or something. But when the man in the pointy hat wiggles his fingers and says strange words - any result other than "nothing happens" has left reality and common sense behind.

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I don't understand why people don't set up kickstarters with massive (like six to twelve month) buffers in their estimated delivery dates. I didn't see many people posting about not backing paizo's second kickstarter due to the eighteen month delay in getting the goods. I doubt it would drive many away and would help avoid these kinds of ill feeling.

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I imagine it comes down to bang for you buck.

Maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot for saying this but people know that they are going to accept Paizo's stuff (well most of it). It is perceived as "safe" or otherwise trusted because it comes from the source.

It is a matter of perception though. I have seen some 3rd party material I would put a peg above Wizards/Paizo's stuff and some 1st party stuff I wouldn't touch in a million years. Player tend to say, "more often than not- Paizo's products are good". (Lets be honest... there are some REAL bad products on the 3rd party market)

So when a player goes to spend $1 where will they want to spend it? On the product that 75% of the time is solid or the total unknown. It COULD be good or it COULD be a sloppy piece of junk. If you follow the 3rd parties you know who make the good products (LPJ, Rite, DSP, etc) but that takes foresight and research.

I suspect that's a big part of many people's thinking (certainly one hears reference to a 3PP "glut" pre-pathfinder with various derogatory comments as to quality control).

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In my case though, as a "Paizo only" player, it's nothing to do with quality but is more about feel. I value the fact that Paizo as a publisher can focus on developing a consistent and coherent feel for their rules, campaign settings, adventures, etcetera (and this even extends to play aids like flipmats, cards, etcetera). It's not going to be perfect, since it's too big for one person to really keep an eye on and therefore the occasional inconsistency will sneak through. Nonetheless, it's a more homogenous collection than if the net is cast wider to include products from other publishers. That increased consistency of design helps me to integrate the various bits and pieces more easily - I would find it easier to incorporate material from Paizo's People of the North than from Kobold Press's The Northlands when playing a viking-type, for example. That's not making any comment as to the quality of the two books or publishers (I'm a big fan of Kobold Publishing as well) merely the ease of assimilation.

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...I am not going to charge an army on foot.

Wimp.

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I would like to add something here...I have problems with the whole 'punishing me for my "creative thinking"' is the same problem I have with "you are cheating". Neither are conductive to debate/discussion or arguements.

It's a shame this is even controversial, to be frank. The problem with calling someone a cheat is you are passing judgement on their motives.

Someone who keeps adding in multiple bonuses of the same type might be cheating or might just be making a mistake. It's impossible to tell just from what they're doing and leading off with "that's cheating" is going to be counterproductive far more often than it will be helpful.

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I submit that, when you have a dolphin puppet on your hand and Harvester of Sorrows comes on, there is only one thing to do.

Rue the decision to branch out into children's birthday parties?

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I'll admit this thread seems kinda hypothetical to me... I couldn't imagine this stuff actually happening in a gaming group.

I Love playing Elves... I have never asked to play one in the Marvel heroes game... or the Star Wars game... or even the Wheel of time game.

If they don't exist in the setting... why would a player get insistent about BEING one there?? Does this actually HAPPEN??

Unfortunately, both sides tend to address the hypothetical extreme of the opposing side. The DMisGod crowd tend to cite players insisting on platemail wearing elves in a WW2 historical setting whereas the PlayersRightsAreSacrosanct crowd like to point out the failings of a DM who sits his players down and then reads them a story.

Neither is very common, I suspect (and I doubt either side is advocating for what the other is lambasting). Nonetheless, hyperbole is a seductive arguing tool.

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There's no "should" about it. You're treating 3.5/PF bonuses as some kind of "default" or correct approach. That's silly - what we're comparing is two utterly atrocious methods of modelling reality. If D&D:Next results in a different scenario than PF it's not some mark against it. It's just "doing it badly" in a different way.

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That's only really relevant if you think the +2 adjustment is reasonable. Personally, I think D&D does an appalling job of simulating people hitting one another with swords so whether it does that via stacking bonuses or via multiple rolls isnt really relevant. It's still a lousy simulation.

If you want a realistic game, I dont think D&D is a very good choice, no matter what the system.

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I'll prolly never get to use this book in actual play. My gaming group turned into vapourware awhile ago now.

But I still want it. Is that so wrong?

I'm in a similar position. I havent looked forward to a rulebook this much since the Gamemastery Guide, despite being nearly 100% confident it will never get any use.

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Nice work. Very easy to use. :)