So, a sail's been spotted, but how far away is the ship?
Can you see the whole ship or is it still hull down with just the sails showing?
What about that island the treasure map is pointing to?
I've done it a bit hurriedly during boring parts of training, so it's a bit rough.
It does both simple and "complex" calculations for spotting land and ships. I've assumed Golarion has the same radius as Earth. I also assume the weather's fine and the lookout is eagle-eyed and sober.
An example: assuming a ship with a deck 10 feet above sea level and a lookout at the crosstrees 70 feet up. The ship is heading towards the White Cliffs of Dover (UK, not Golarion), they reach upwards of 350 feet above sea level.
That means that the lookout will be able to spot them at just over 33 miles. People on deck have an effective horizon of just under 4 miles. But since the cliffs are 350 feet tall, they'll be able to spot them when the ship gets to just under 27 miles.
They happen to be attempting to run the English Blockade. Unbeknownst to them, a British frigate is ahead. It's under full sail; it has somewhere to go, but won't mind turning to snatch up a blockade runner. Assuming the top of the frigate's sails are 120 feet above sea level, our blockade runner's lookout can spot the sails 23 miles out and it'll be hull up at 10 miles (the lookout's horizon).
If our lookout is hungover and is not paying attention, then the officer of the watch could spot the sails 17 miles out and it'd be hull up at under 4 miles.
Now the island. You might think you could spot it's location first from the vegetation or mountain peak (if it was a volcanic island). But no, you'd get a much earlier indication because of clouds that form above islands. An astute sailor could determine that there's something "thataway" due to a cloud bank on the horizon in an otherwise clear sky. So the ship might be able to spot it over 100 miles away.
I found this one a little confusing too. I left it entirely up to the players with some ground rules (which they clarified in advance)...
** spoiler omitted **
For my group I put a different spin on it.
He gave them the five questions to catch him in a lie, saying he'd lie to some or all of them, but the trick is...
Spoiler:
His lie is that he would give any lying answers to the questions at all.
He actually would answer every one of the five questions as honestly as he could, leaving the PCs to puzzle about what the lie could be.
This made it easy to GM, since I didn't have to make up any lies or have to puzzle through any of the players' logic traps. Whatever they pulled to manipulate the questions would be the wrong guess, since he'd answer each without any attempt at deception on his part. Every sense motive would indicate he's being truthful, which the players might assume is just him having an absurdly high bluff, but is actually a clue. His denials that they won the contest evne if they caught him in a logic trap would likewise be the clue to the actual solution, which he'd reveal to win the contest if the PC don't get it or accuse him of cheating:
"I, in fact, made every effort to answer your questions as sincerely as possible. The answers may have been contradictory as you constructed them, but they were not attempts to deceive you, I answered them sincerely, thus that was not the lie. I said I would give you five questions to catch me in a lie, and spoke honestly, but I did not say the lie you needed to catch would be the response to any of the five questions! In truth, the lie you failed to guess is simply this: I lied when I said I would lie!"
It looks like this summer I will have a chance to teach a one-week course at a local elementary school called Pathfinder Fantasy Adventures. As the name suggests, it will basically be me running one-hour mini-sessions of Pathfinder with the goal of teaching problem-solving skills, strengthening basic math abilities, and exercising the imagination. This isn't just me trying to find an excuse to play more Pathfinder - I actually think there is educational merit in role-playing games.
I'm looking for ideas from anybody in terms of running the course. The class will consist of 5th and 6th graders, and the plan is currently to run a streamlined version of Pathfinder not because they wouldn't get the full rules but because I want to be able to save time. I expect to use some flip mats and counters for visual aids, and I'll probably be giving each student their own set of dice to keep after the course.
The big thing I'm hoping to do is focus more on problem-solving than on combat. There will definitely be combat, but I want to de-emphasize that where possible to avoid any potential problems with parents getting upset about their kids pretending to do violent things at school.
Has anyone seen something similar to this done before? If so, any suggestions on how to plan?
For those interested, here is the pitch I used for the course outline:
Long Description:
The Pathfinder role-playing game is a game in which players pretend to take the role of fantasy heroes similar to the protagonists from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings novels or J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. The players must work together to overcome monsters, traps, and obstacles on their way to a final goal. Typical goals include the recovery of a lost treasure, the rescue of a princess, and similar staples of fantasy literature.
In an educational environment, Pathfinder can teach children the importance of creativity and teamwork while exercising their imaginations and igniting an interest in both history and literature. The game is heavily rooted in many different mythologies, with creatures such as gorgons from Greek mythology, the chupacabra from Central American myth, and even literary creations such as the jabberwocky from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.
Additionally, the game uses several different kinds of polyhedral dice to determine the outcome of various actions. Players will need to learn about probability and statistics in order to figure out which actions have the best chance of success. Combining creativity, literary references, historical context, and mathematical skills, Pathfinder is an excellent educational tool.
Proposed Classroom Model: Four to six students will be placed in a group, where they will be walked through the basics of designing a hero for the coming adventure and introduced to the concept of role-playing. One instructor will serve as the “Game Master,” a referee-like individual who prepares the story, adjudicates actions, and explains the rules of the game when necessary. The students will then be presented with the story, which will involve an opening conflict, several obstacles, and a conclusion where they receive rewards for their successes. Several adventures can be linked together into a “campaign,” during which the students will be able to develop their imaginary heroes in different ways.
Sample Scenario: The heroes wake up in a dungeon after having been kidnapped by an evil wizard. The wizard plans on forcing them to work in his salt mines as slaves. Joining together, the heroes will have to trick their jailer into letting them out of their cell, sneak past the wizard's pet monsters, and ultimately defeat the evil wizard himself in order to earn their freedom. They cannot pass these tests individually – they will need to work together as a group and use their different skills in order to escape.
Educational Value: The Pathfinder role-playing game provides three tiers of educational value:
1) The game enforces the importance of teamwork, cooperation, and group problem solving,
2) The scenarios are rooted in classic literature and ancient mythology, providing many opportunities for further reading,
3) The game's mechanics rely on arithmetic and statistics, allowing those who take the time to learn about the math behind the game to gain an advantage.
Most importantly, the Pathfinder role-playing game allows students to have fun and be creative. They win or lose as a group, and as long as everybody has fun while learning, everybody wins.
I would like to request a sticky thread be created (not this one because I can't edit it after an hour), that would, in the first post, give a list of guides in this sub-forum.
In the thread we'll discuss which guides to include and which category they should be in - it would be a community project.
This is my no means a complete list...its just a start.
Also, if you are going to post a guide for this list, please have a discussion thread for said guide in the Advice forum so we can link to it. The guide can be off-site, but we need a discussion thread for it, please. Also somewhere in your guide please reference which books you use (Core, APG, UM, UC, etc...).
Posts
