TerraNova's page

I seriously doubt this type of system will make it into the game. Restrict item looting to someone who actually killed you. Not just any random person that walks by that did nothing to deserve loot. Besides you'll end up with a lot of loot stealing. I can just wait until you kill someone then loot their corpse before you do.

...

Imagine two wizards battling each other at range. I can just go stand next to the guy about to lose and loot him as soon as he dies. No bounty for me and the winning wizard probably can't do anything to me unless he can take on 2 players back to back. And even if he can..he still doesn't get to loot the wizard he killed.

EvE has a very similar scenario - it allows the actual killer to loot the wreck (=husk) without repercussions. Anyone else is stealing from the killer, and can be attacked by that character for some time with no negative consequences. So in your wizard duel example, sure... the sneaky thief could rob the dead wizard, but would immediately afterwards be exposed to the same treatment that ruined the other wizard. If he wins, he loots you, getting a share of what you took, and some of your own stuff.

That's not to say that an exhausted, wounded opponent isn't going to be less able to defend his claim. Sometimes, the jackal wins after the lions exhausted themselves. Maybe being that jackal is my kind of fun in the sandbox? ;)

Plus, there are too many deaths from going link dead to lose ALL your inventory.

The negatives of this system outway the positives.

Going LD outside of combat will remove you from the world in a short time, afaik. So no huge problem here. I personally don't like everything about PFO, but played enough eve to grow the thick hide necessary to live with such losses.

In eve, you don't fly what you can't afford to lose. In PFO, you wear it, but don't ever take it off. PFO is downright gentle

GenCon is in August - so they would need to ship Skull & Shackles 6 by Juli. Getting S&S 1 and 2 out in April would mean squeezing 3, 4 and 5 into May and June. Rough, but might be manageable.

I read about the printing woes, and understand the delays are not their fault - merely a bit puzzled on how paizo plans to go forward

I actually like the back matter very much. Since I read the volume long before it sees actual play, the adventure usually is "expected quality" long before it becomes "real". The morsels of Golarion, the monsters and also the much-maligned fiction keep my interest warm until i finally get to play or gm the adventure itself.

Crimson Throne by a fair distance if you don't mind the conversion from 3.5. Otherwise I would say Jade Regent if you want low prep-time, Kingmaker otherwise.

I just noticed you pushed back Skull and Shackles 1 to April. While I am no businessmen, and have no idea about the intricacies of the publishing business, isn't that a very bad sign for the AP? After all, it has to be finished by GenCon for the next "blockbuster", unless I am mistaken.

How is this even longer holdup going to affect it? Are you going to cut an installment? Is it going to be more rough-run on the development? Are you foregoing a gencon release for Shattered Star, and catch up over a longer period?

Not trying to spread blame or panic here, I'm just curious on how this is going to all balance out.

So any close-range class is excluded from a significant chunk of encounters, standing by and cheering as their long-distance friends have all the fun? Sounds like a bug to me ;)

Seriously, though - I have the utmost respect for Goblinworks' attempt to balance all the possible combinations available in their "classless classes" system. Adding significant chunks of content that more or less requires deep investment into maybe three paths would make it quite hard to argue for not taking these paths to their extreme.

In addition, have you ever heard about elephant hunting with bow and arrow. In short, it is not done. Elephants used to be taken down with spear-slings and insane amounts of traps. At the most suicidal, long spears were used. Now blow that elephant up around 4 times, and you get a dragon worthy of the name. What weapon is going to even get past the scales and flesh to pierce something more than just annoying?

Some realism needs to be traded in for fun. That is why EvE (which this game seems ever closer to copying) is taking far reaching liberties not only with lots of physics, but also with economics (free unlimited storage in every station), criminal justice (capsuleer criminals losing a ship, but nothing beyond that from police action) and general logic (why do the space zombies stop shooting at my pod, instead of hauling it in and trying to convert me). Having large enemies seem to be a very acceptable tradeoff to me.

Lets consider this request for a moment. What monsters would that leave to fight, without ending a bloody smear by implied forces alone?

Giants? Out
Dragons? Babys maybe, but mostly out.
Demons? Some fit in, but mostly out.
Bears? As long as they don't move too fast... maybe.

Enemies would have to be either "PC races" or extremely carefully selected, and many opportunities for the players to "feel heroic" would be out from the get-go.

Many players want ridiculous sizes. Looking at popular MMOs, most have "group enemies" many times the typical player size for very practical reasons: Players feel more important, while at the same time, the enemy is not completely hidden by PCs, so it can still be seen, targeted, ...

GM, could you please indicate what else you need before making a decision?

Since statting up characters is pretty time-consuming for me, I would like to at least know who is going into "round 2" before committing an evening to it.

Alright, after some consideration, my druid idea drifted more into a witch:

'Dirty' Dergo, Human male rogue

Background:

Born as one of the children produced by the Pixie's kitten, Dergo had it better than most whoresons in the world by virtue of his mother, Darielle. He grew up reasonably happy, even though his surroundings and associates grew closer to the Sczarni by the year.

He slowly developed into a smalltime enforcer, full-time braggart and sometime thug. Never really brutal or vicious, but more concerned with limiting the seemingly-inevitable growth of his debts than the particular morals of this one job, promising silently that the next would be better whenever pushed to his limits. He never killed anyone, but left his share of broken noses.

When the Giants attacked Sandpoint, he was one of the first finding himself collected in the feedbag of a Hill Giant. Only Shalelu's timely rescue with arrow and blade saved him from ending up as a meal to the cannibal, and he has never forgotten it. Despite not being particularly wilderness-worthy, he has done his utmost to repay the ranger, and even managed to straighten his act enough to not have his rescuer scowl everytime he passes by.

Campaign Trait:

Rescued (Shalelu)

Ryoko Kaijitsu, Human female witch

Background:

Scion of the Westcrown branch of the Kaijitsus, Ryoko has grown up as the apple of her very young mother's eye. Life was tough on her, and the decaying splendor of the former capitol formed much of her view on life - as the last haunting notes of a grand symphony, the epilogue of a greater age. She grew up morbid, though never quite nihilistic.

In her early teenage years, she often managed to sneak out after dark, both to shock her friends, where her daring earned some admiration, and out of curiosity. That curiosity finally got the better of her when one of the roving shadow-beasts caught her scent and begun to track her. She tried to slip away, but only caught herself in deeper and deeper shadows. When finally she ended in a back alley, the beast just feet behind her, all light faded. As she struggled, something touched her soul, and changed it. A weasel with glowing red eyes faced the shadow beasts, hissed threateningly, and held it at bay until dawn broke.

She never spoke of the event, not to anyone, not her mother, not her friends. But she no longer fit into Westcrown, and when recent events in that city began to came to head, her mother seized the opportuniy. She put her daughter on the one of the last ships to leave port, hoping to send her to Sandpoint, where she knew hoped Ameiko would take care of her nice. Maybe the wild child and former adventurer could instill some sense into her.

Campaign Trait:

Younger Sibling (Ameiko)

Very much interested in this game. :) I'll try to get a concept to you by tomorrow. Put me down for either a rogue or a druid.

I'll update tonight, my wife is back in the hospital... not got the mind for it.

Just to make things clear, I pulled out of the priest thread chiefly to avoid going all over Alandra's responsibilities, not because I think its unimportant.

Anya pulled free her blades, and wiped them clean on the rough hides of the beast that had given them so much trouble. "Vengeance is never good enough, but we at least prevented this from happening again." Unlike her brother, she felt no sympathy for the beasts, or regret on taking them down. They were monsters, and a peril to be defeated rather than admired.

1d20 ⇒ 9 Perception
1d20 + 7 ⇒ (15) + 7 = 22 Survival

Anya was still trying hard to do justice both to her own defense (a frenzied animal very rarely cared what its claws rend to shreds) and maintaining a modicum of pressure on the Tatzelwurm. She managed to slip by a stab from her shorter blade, but this was all she felt could be done now that Alannah was out of immediate danger

1d20 + 6 ⇒ (3) + 6 = 9
1d20 + 5 ⇒ (13) + 5 = 18
1d6 + 2 ⇒ (6) + 2 = 8

While I am intrigued by the blog, color me sceptical as well. Even if you start small, you would still need a substantial "Content Mortgage" to avoid paid-beta syndrome.

It is, however, potentially a way away from the "common wisdom" that only lumbering giants (like EA / Bioware) can successfully develop an MMO, and that you can only hope to break even at half a million customers, over the course of 4 years.

I'll see where this goes, try the game (if Goblinworks will have me), and follow the rise (and fall?) of the project with even more interest.

Reading all these names, I fear we may have created a "Democratic People's Republic of Equalia", with its capital of Justice. :)

My first thought is that plagues would not have as great of an impact in a fantasy world as they have in our own.

Pathfinder 8 (7 days to the grave) had some excellent thoughts on how much (surprisingly little!) impact clerical healing has on an epidemic. Bottom line is: ither you nip it in the bud, or you're trying to put down a forest fire by squirtgun

I played all classes to level 10, to get a feel for each story. So if anyone wants the basics for any story, I can happily spoil that for you. I also have some deeper playtime for the bounty hunter (30ish, finished Act 1) and smuggler (finished Coruscant)

Sh (as in SH..) ve (enVElope) rtmark

She'll be released from hospital either tomorrow (1.12) or the day after. We don't yet know if everything turned our right - the wound is too delicate for any close examination yet. Despite some very disheartening evidence, we keep as much hope as we can.

If further treatment is needed, she'll probably have a more severe surgery in early feb next year.

After working through the first shock, and getting my head back on straight, here are some thoughts and announcements

The Kingdom will officially be known as Schwertmark. It keeps the german theme of Rostland, is suitably martial for a "wilderness conquest" scenario, and avoids corny references to the Stag Lord or banditry.

Anya claims the title of "Princess". That is suitably generic and unlikely to cause much offense at the court of Brevoy, but makes clear her reign is independant of another (as a "normal" noble title would imply).

Im half back in the game. I try to post when i have time and spare mental cycles. Not every day, and probably not walls of text, but hopefully not to leave you hanging anymore.

Sounds good?

Lev, take over my character for any kingdom building decisions. I'd still like to name it eventually.

Wrath, NPC me for a while.

As you may or may not know my wife is in hospital right now. I just got news her operation likely failed. She is in tears, in shock. I'm beyond words.

I can't play. I don't know when I'll be back. Maybe somedays soon, maybe... I don't know.

I'll update tomorrow. Sorry about the delay... stuff happened

I'll hopefully have an IC post tonight - the baby is being cranky...

So, what does our kingdoms leadership look like:

.
..
...
.... Let my list be straight

Ruler: Anya
Councilor: Elsbeth? (NPC alternative: Svetlana)
General: Alannah
Grand Diplomat: Elsbeth? (NPC alternative: Captain Brovoy)
High Priest: Alandra
Magister: ? Father Kevken ?
Marshal: Lev
Royal Assassin: ? leave unfilled for now ?
Spy master: ? Bergan ?
Treasurer: ? Oleg ?

Personally, I think Elsbeth would make a Grand Diplomat (sorry, someone had to do it...), due to her exotic accent and general world-traveling experience, while the counciler should be someone more local - but that's just my view on things, and you should feel free to pick the spot you want.

Naming stuff is hard... :) Give me a day or two to mull that over.

As for leveling, I take a rogue level, giving

+1 BaB
+1 Reflex save
Evasion
Rogue Trick: Weapon Training (Aldori Duelling Sword)
+1d8 - 1 ⇒ (3) - 1 = 2 HP
+1 to Dex

Skill Points go to:

Diplomacy,
Bluffx2,
Sense Motivex3
Acrobaticsx2,
Survival

Yep, fourth time in my PbP career (which has been going on and off since 2000) that I finish a story either as a player or GM. Tremendous job, and really well done.

I played the beta about 4 months back, and can not say too much besides looking forward to being part of the stress test, and having preordered.

While I love me some Brevoy from the pure setting flavor, I find it hard to imagine a successful AP set in the relatively settled and closed environment. APs are action-driven because frankly, that is what Pathfinder is best at. A courtly intrigue AP would not only discard that strength to a large degree, but put many groups into an uncomfortable spot.

It's great fun to read about intrigue, double-dealings and backstabbings, but for many players, RPGs are a power fantasy. Taking them for a ride, and having their love one's poisoned, names smeared and ultimately denied justice for the greater good is not going to go over well on most the tables I played at.

The Crux of the matter is, I think, weapon statistics and not names.

If you want to call your club a tonfa or your sabre a dao - that's not going to be a problem with most people I prefer to game with. If you want better stats for your "item", you have to pay the tax feat.

I would usually assume the compromise was deeper than the party is letting on. Even going public with this is a cost in terms of reputation and confidence. Admitting that CC data was stolen is a much deeper, highly damaging "breach of trust". From what I hear, SOE is still recovering from the attacks.

I hope steam is telling their customers everything, but if I were affected, I would keep a very close eye on my credit card.

I never understood the lure of Elder Scroll games. Morrowind was meh, good for few hours but ultimately nothing gripped me about "lost in xenophobiatown". Oblivion was worse, with its "do what you want, you can't get ahead of the curve - though if you try hard enough, you may fall behind" rubberband difficulty

Well, shucks. If that rapier was a duelling sword, I would be all over it. I'll use it before selling it - but it's a stopgap, not something I want to hold onto.

As it stands, I could use the amulet of natural armor, it would make my armor a nice 20.

One or two cure moderate potions would be good, too.

As for the leadership, Anya probably would be rather insistant about taking it. :) No offense, but making her step back would be a tough discussion.

From a gaming perspective, I know that "drunk out of your shoes" usually translates to "sickened". IDK what "strung out" is going to be modeled after, but sickened is a nasty condition and I doubt it would be much better.

I'll try and update tomorrow.. these last few days have again been quite intense. Hopefully I'll get my "functional" 6 hours of sleep for a change tonight.

Just dropping by to tell you how much I like the focus feature. Really this is just what I considered doing in greasemonkey (and with massive resource wastage)!

Great work! Thanks a lot.

Sleep deprivation is a wonderful thing. Makes you feel all... fuzzy-wuzzy. As is having poop in a diapher (she doesn't do that very often,we need to keep track to be sure she is not totally congested)

Anyway, I sneak away an hour or two for myself every so often. I'll try typing something coherent after reading only the most recent posts.

Just a quick update:

* Its pretty hard to get a kid officially registered in germany
* There's a lot more to do than you can manage if you want to actually see your baby
* The newly-made grandparents rock
* my daughter is not doing too good. Not life-threatening but she needed medical attention for most of the week.
* With any luck my wife and her can come home tomorrow or the day after
* Still need to ask you to be patient. Once life normalizes a little, I'll read up

IANAL (or developer), but: I think Domain Powers are part of the "single class enticements." If you class out of Cleric, even if your new choice offers spell progression, your domain powers stay as they are unless your new class actually tells you differently.

Just when we started to get settled in, a very psecial birthday occurred somewhat earlier than we expected. My daughter was born today in the early morning hours, and right now that fact alone drowns out about everything at all.

My personal all time favorite list:

Curse of the Crimson Throne

Its been said so many times before it really is almost a cliche, but the AP works in any fashion. It is cohesive, it is well-supported, it has very memorable characters good and bad that stay with you as the AP progresses. Plus it had the daring of early APs that seems to have been dulled somewhat in the later installments.

Kingmaker

Daring, open-ended, the sandbox as it should be. It owes some debts in the story department, true - but mainly due to the impossibility to script as tightly as usual. It has by far the best "mini-rules" of all the APs, but loses out to the excellently fleshed out Korvosa

Carrion Crown

Ah, what it could have been... had it been a little less of a genre tour de force, and pulled its story together a little more tightly. Still, it has excellent adventures, memorable lokales and in general enough of a new spin on old plots to stay interesting. Its main problems come down to a slightly botched "starter town" and "creature overload".

Rise of the Runelords

Ah, Nostalgia is a tough beast to slay. I wanted to rank it higher, if only to conjure some of the "old daring" back into Paizo (that seemed to get lost somewhat around the time of Second Darkness and Legacy of Fire). Sadly, it was a forray into unknown territory, and has its flaws. Some as glaring as a certain Lamia, some more subtle as the near-botched "Sins of the Saviours" adventure.

Legacy of Fire

Arabian nights never clicked with me in any major way, so LoF is leading into my lower-rated half by personal taste only. If you love the genre, you get a very solid AP, if you don't, you don't.

Council of Thieves

A rough transition into Pathfinder RPG. A plot that was more than hard ot follow, with the big bad only beginning to show at the very end. Rough on the balance, rough on the flow of the story. Only Thesing and the Sixthfold trial of Lazaroth save this one from having to duke it out for rock bottom

Serpent Skull

Started off on very very high notes. Souls for Smuggler's Shiv raised such high hopes - but the rest of the AP felt like a smaller, less thought-out kingmaker. Racing to Ruin was essentially a wasted adventure ("We trek through the jungle, compete to conquer the ruin so we can trek through the jungle and conquer the ruin"). Also, there was a distinct lack of indiana jones feeling - however that could have been achieved.

Second Darkness

One plus: Great drow, evil and rotten. Started off with the solid with Shadow in the Sky and Children of the Void. But between Armageddon Echo ("You were lowlife, now save the elves due to the goodness of your hearts") , Endless Night ("Cut your paladin some slack, he can't win this one") and A memory of Darkness ("Save the elves no matter how badly they try to screw you over") there is just not too much going for this AP.

Interestingly, I seem to rate the "backswing" APs (Spring / Summer) higher than the "blockbusters" that open at GenCon. Maybe they are as a whole not as dependant on wowing on the first adventure?

Just to let you know - I am currently moving into a new home, and am pretty unsure when I will have internet hooked up there. There might be "dry spells" of going for days without posting, or it might work out within 2-3 days. Its just unknown for now.

TerraNova wrote:

Lovecraft getting his dirty talons progressively deeper into the setting

What? You're afraid? Your brand of insanity is delusion? :P

TerraNova wrote:

The Worldwound. "Oh, so you're all doomed and nothing can be done about it. Carry on about your Westcrown revolution, by the way"

I love that. It's very human. "There's a big problem, but it's not my problem. Someone else will take care of it." "It's looking grim, but what can I do about it? It's too big for me!" "I'll get to it once I solved these more immediate problems that affect me on a very personal level"

You can see humans practise this sort of thinking every single day.

Nope, Lovecraft just leaves me rolling my eyes. The big bad a huge octopus for crying out loud. The most severe problem is that behind the flowery language and assertions that its beyond the ken of mortals, the emperor is naked. There is just nothing behind it, being unthinkable and all. Whenever Lovecraft tries to deliver, it is octopus heads, giant jellyfish and fish boats ramming great old ones back to sleep.

It's a fantasy of artificial helplessness. Its the assertion that flipping the lightswitch was a bad idea, because huddling in fear is preferrable to even trying to fight. Not attractive to me.

Regarding the Worldwound - yes, I know. I use this to play anything but a futile struggle north in WFRP. However, having to rely on that too much just... doesn't work. Besides, I am kind of... burned on that. Warhammer and Exalted both feature worlds that essentially can't be saved, but merely be kept running for another day. I don't think this is a satisfying result on the longer run.

While I refuse to follow any link so agressively promoted, here is a thing I noticed about variable storylines and sandbox games.

Not. Worth. It.

90% of the time, players will not deviate from the script in any significant way. They build to the sides of the script, establishing romances with the throwaway barmaid and deathly grudges against the guardsmen kindly asking them to not spit from the roof. They don't, however, shake up the story per-se.

Way back when I was GMing Age of Worms, I reworked adventure 3 (Blackwall Keep) to a much more open-ended swamp-exploration scenario. Just putting up rought constrains took hours - but the players just beelined straight to the lair as quickly as they could manage. (My) players wanted an entertaining story, not a quasi-simulation of taming a swath of wetlands.

That in addition to the much-cited constraints on time, space in the volume, and fiction analogy. After all, you fight the high priest in front of the idol, and not in the pantry.

Strangely, I like some of the complaints levelled here - the relatively marginal "elves and dwarves", the fact that the age of lost omens began with Aroden's death, the shorthand cultures, the "tried and true" racial stereotypes with just some bits of added flavor.

After all, who wants to play in a world populated with elves who mature on human scales, live for thousand years, but ritualistically eat two out of every three children born to them, accounting for their low numbers?

Anyway, here's my list of things Golarion could go without:

• Lovecraft getting his dirty talons progressively deeper into the setting
  
• The Worldwound. "Oh, so you're all doomed and nothing can be done about it. Carry on about your Westcrown revolution, by the way"
  
• Wall of the faithless-style afterlife for non-diety worshippers. It doesn't matter if you're a moral atheist, animist or follow some philosophy - either worship a certified diety, or off to groetus you go. Unless you're following a demon lord or archdevil, aparrently - they are extra special
  
• Extra-special demon lords.
  

Never quite a fan of HP Lovecraft, actually. I find the "lovecraft-creep" into Golarion a bit... unfortunate.

After all, what do you need a Sub-Niggurat when you have a perfectly fine Lamashtu? Where is the "selling point" of adding a lot of "old cults" if you already have plenty of dark gods, horsemen, demon lords by the dozen and archdevils, whore queens, and whatever these things that replaced the Obrynth are called these days (I know what they are, but couldn't spell that word...)

Its not that I am opposed to the "pulp feel" per se - but please, don't go too deeply into the xenophobic, borderline nihilist world of HP Lovecraft. Heroes need to be heroes, not barely surviving victims. Oh, and don't introduce whacking elder things in the head with a ship as the means to prevent the end of the world as we know it ;)

I'm not sure it was explicitly expressed anywhere, but Cockatrice cavaliers (IMHO) probably don't have much common ground.

In fact, Goblin Cavaliers often make up their own "knightly orders" with them as the sole member - and probably still count as cockatrice as far as the rules are concerned.

Clark Peterson wrote:

Legalistic/business opinions

[...] I guess I will just write the money off to a bad investment (God knows a much smaller hit than some of my other investments) and get on with things. Who knows? Perhaps one day I'll be pleasantly surprised.

That is pretty much my take on my Anarchist's GM Cookbook. If i ever see it, good. If not - well, fool me once. Lessons like this come at a price, and this one was relatively affordable for what it taught me.

Ah, this is just so tempting, but after rough-drafting a character, I decided that my plate is too full right now for another game.

It sounds as if a wonderful group of players is itching to take their shot at the AP, and I wish you the very best of luck with the group. Have fun, I will be checking the story you tell.

Let me express interest here, hopefully I will be able to draw up a full application with all the works either tonight or tomorrow afternoon at the latest