Vic Wertz's page

It really will be out at Gen Con this year*! It has gone to the printer and everything!

This supirse product will people who dont go to the con be able to get it or is it exclusive to Paizocon?

People will be able to get it at paizo.com after the show. We want to make PaizoCon folks feel special, but we don't want to penalize people who can't attend!

Vic Wertz wrote:

There actually will be a special release of a product at PaizoCon, though it won't be anywhere *near* as big as the deluxe Runelords book. What is it? Sorry—you'll have to wait!

So...any word on this surprise special PaizoCon release!?! Please, please, please!!!!

I suspect we won't be saying a word until PaizoCon.

I want people to go into the PaizoCon store and see something that they had *no idea* existed until that very moment!

Chocolate dice are the perfect choice for GMs who fudge their rolls.

Cosmo has a Chinese name? Is it 咖死摸?

Google Translate says "Coffee Dead Touch".

I'd say that's spot on, then.

I... uh, what?

We'll be releasing a free PDF of the rulebook a few weeks before the game's August release.

I guess I'm an optimistically cynical realist.

Does the new 64 page format mean more art or is it all story/maps?

If you divide the number of pieces of art in a product by the number of pages, you get the average art-per-page count. That number should actually increase slightly with the higher page count. So, in general, expect fractionally more than double the art when compared to the old format.

(The reason for this is that doubling the page count actually gives us more than twice as many "content" pages, because we don't need to double things like the title page, OGL, ads, or the like.)

10. On tax return, list of dependents includes his wife, two kids, three mistresses, and four Cayman banks

9. Instead of (D) or (R) after his name, has ($)

8. His congressional washroom has taps for hot, cold, and light sweet crude

7. Keeps telling everyone his favorite color is green, but never wears green

6. You think you've spotted subtle clues in his autobiography, Taking America to the Cleaners

5. He can't say the phrase "my constituency" without giggling

4. His "business card" is just a deposit slip for his bank account

3. He keeps asking himself, "What would Blagojevich do?"

2. Always ends speeches with the phrase "Operators are standing by."

1. He's in Congress—what more do you need?

THey're still doing the maps, but the "homage" covers ended with the first story arc.

For instance, page 120 of Rise of the Runelords collectors edition there is map. Can you tell me how I can extract the map using adobe acrobat (10.1.6)

First, make sure Adobe Reader is set to show you the tool you need. Go to the View menu, then Show/Hide > Toolbar Items > Select & Zoom > Show All Select & Zoom tools.

Choose the Select tool from the toolbar—it's the one that looks like an insertion cursor (aka "I-beam pointer") next to a selection cursor (aka "arrow pointer"). Click on the map, away from any text area. Copy and paste, or just drag it to your desktop.

I just did it with the map on page 120 of my watermarked PDF, and it works fine.

There *are* some maps where you need to do something slightly different. When a map takes up the entire page—that means no borders or anything—Adobe treats it as a page background, and to select a page background, you need to option-click (Mac) or ctrl-click (Windows) with the Select tool. (Our Flip-Map and Map Packs are generally set up like that.)

To be clear, 'episodic' in this context should not be equated to 'reset button', which was the biggest problem on VOYAGER (and to a lesser extent TNG). Not the lack of a big over-arcing storyline, but the fact that what happened last week was immediately forgotten about. No show can get away with doing that any more....

You've never seen The Simpsons?

Long answer: Sometimes things happen that make certain laws harder to enforce, but those things don't usually negate the reasons that those laws came to exist in the first place. In this case, it definitely doesn't do that—in fact, some would argue that anything that makes it easier for people to own guns is all the more reason to have well-thought-out, well-written laws about owning and using them.

Short answer: no.

I've removed a few posts. Please keep on topic in the product discussion forum. (On Topic: discussing the myths behind monsters in this product. Off topic: debating whether presenting myths to children as truthful is bad parenting.)

Me (to Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Designer Mike Selinker): Game Designers To Be Replaced by Computers. Sorry, man. Time to start honing your standup comedy routine, or maybe your hairdressing skills.

Mike: Where do I get me one of these "computers"?

Our PDFs are intended to reflect the current print edition, for good or bad. (Otherwise, we'd be spending too much time updating old products and not enough time making new ones!)

We'll update you when we can. The editorial team has just concluded the push to get all of our Gen Con products to the printer, so we'll have some breathing room to fit in things like the PFS boon soon.

To be honest, it's not really even a Paizo thing—we generally give our artists a lot of freedom, as we find that usually gets us better results. Dictating armor design on every piece of art is just not the best place to spend our effort.

... My guild invites are acting funny. I sent the details via PM to Cris Lambertz, Digital product Assistant, because he has been quick to jump on lots of technical difficulty reports. Was that the best person to contact?

That's fine... and Chris is a she. :-)

Main Kickstarter backers (who are not also tech demo backers) can purchase Thornkeep without worrying about also receiving it in the pdf pack.

Correct—Thornkeep is not part of the PDF Superpack, or indeed, part of the recent Kickstarter at all.

So the Superpack Dungeon PDF (and most others) aren't expected to be avoidable to us for more than a year, is this correct?

The PDF Superpack is one thing—it's a bundle of 3rd-party PDFs that can be fulfilled immediately. The Emerald Spire Superdungeon is another thing—it's a big book with tons of authors, and it's due next June.

Well it's not "officially official" but if I remember correctly Paizo has directly said they have no plans to make their own Psionics book any time soon because Dreamscarred Press did such a good job with it that it'd be kinda redundant.

You're correct that we have said that we don't currently have any firm plans to do psionics (and yes, that's still true). However, the reason has nothing to do with Dreamscarred's efforts—it's that we have other priorities. (This year, for example, our priority is Mythic.)

...can my character also look cool in addition?

There's nothing cooler than a nasty hacking cough that won't go away!

My biggest concern, reading the summaries I've seen, is that while the 32-pagers were essentially 1 level adventures, generally, the 64 pagers seem to be 3-4 level adventures in general. That implies less word count per encounter and area.

Many of the 32-pagers raise PCs by two levels, not one.

"Word count per encounter" is not a terribly useful measurement, as more complicated encounters take more words. It makes much more sense to look at page count.

Note that books have "front matter" and "back matter" which does not double in size when you double the size of the book. So [grabbing a Module off my shelf at random—it's Broken Chains], you get a title/credits page, a two-page spread introducing the adventure, 24 pages of "proper" adventure, two short appendices, and an OGL/advertising page.

In The Dragon's Demand, our first 64-pager, you get a title/credits page, a two-page spread introducing the adventure, 53 pages of "proper" adventure, two short appendices, and an OGL/advertising page.

So you actually get *more* than double the adventure in the 64-pager.

robot chris: starting the Society for the Promotion of Golarion's Robot and Android Welfare

SPGRAW is not the best acronym.

We have received an actual sample, and the weight is lower than our original estimate. That, combined with some changes that allow us to ship some large-but-lightweight items at a lower cost, I'm pleased to report that the international shipping cost for the We Be Goblins minis display has been dramatically reduced. Postage to Australia, for example, has been decreased from the $67+ originally reported in this thread down to just $12.35.

The author fails to take into account the one benefit of the design: distracting the opponent.

crystal: Something smells like... burning.... feet.

You have described the way cilantro tastes to me.

It sounds like they're taking the best of the AP monsters and compiling them for this product. Nice, for those of us who don't always get the APs.

Every Bestiary has included a small percentage of monsters that debuted in Adventure Paths; this one is no exception.

Some have cited the decision to move the show to mostly self-contained 45-minute episodes (rather than the 25-minute, three-to-seven part serials of the old series), which severely curtails the time available for plot setup, resolution and characterisation. There may be something to this, as Doctor Who does not have a regular cast outside of the two or three central figures and each story needs to establish its own cast, location and threats, which is a tall order in just a few minutes. This is the inverse of most shows, where the cast and location are fixed and a small number of guest cast come in every week who can be set up quite quickly. However, I don't think it's the whole story, especially as most of the two-parters (which are roughly the length of the old four-parters) suffer from the same issues.

After further rumination, I'm going to go further than "not the whole story" and just discount that argument entirely. In most seasons, The Twilight Zone had less than half an hour for establishing setting, introducing characters, and delivering a complete story, and they didn't have the benefit of *any* returning cast (apart from the host). That proves to me that a good screenwriter can do a phenomenal job in 25 minutes, so "can't do it well in 50 minutes" is rubbish. (And modern editing lets you offer many more shots and a little more dialogue than they could work in back then.)

We do have some more cases set aside for singles; once enough singles go out of stock, we'll bust more out.

The Eccleston through Tennant years were led dually, by a showrunner/head writer/producer, Russell T. Davies, and a primary producer and executive producer, Julie Gardner. While RTD as head writer was paid greater attention to than Julie Gardner, she still contributed majorly to the show's direction. (There is a lovely tribute to the important role BOTH people played in forming the new Doctor Who series, here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giaMRyn47Xg, performed by three people who should look vaguely familiar.)

The Smith years, these roles are filled by Stephen Moffat and Caroline Skinner, respectively.

Good point. There was also Mal Young alongside Julie on Series 1, and Piers Wenger and Beth Willis in between Julie and Caroline. Also, Phil Collinson, a producer under Russell and Julie, was credited as Executive Producer for some of the episodes he didn't directly produce, and I gather he had about as big a role as Julie or anyone else apart from Russell.

I personally think that the show has been the most successful, creatively speaking, when the main producer is also an experienced writer... (With Verity Lambert being an exception...)

Wes (written on Post-It note attached to map of an island): Remove two-mile-long boat.

Some have cited the decision to move the show to mostly self-contained 45-minute episodes (rather than the 25-minute, three-to-seven part serials of the old series), which severely curtails the time available for plot setup, resolution and characterisation.

I'd argue that nearly every one of the classic serials was longer than they needed to be—especially when the number of episodes was greater than 4. Sure, dramatic pacing was different then, but there was still a *lot* of filler.

And having to work in a cliffhanger every 23 minutes wasn't the greatest thing for plot design.

I'd consider what you're describing as a "campaign journal" for the purposes of the CUP.

I would assume there's a difference between showing a table with a map and you playing on it and showing just the map in detail, but if you read the CUP it says specifically what you can and cannot use.

Yeah, if you're shooting a table and that table happens to have maps and pawns on it, that's fine.

I stopped paying attention in the mid-'90s, when his name started appearing on piles of crappy books that he apparently had little to do with.

Sara Marie: Woohoo! Donuts! Ohh... hamburger buns...

Paula Deen would be heartbroken.

There actually will be a special release of a product at PaizoCon, though it won't be anywhere *near* as big as the deluxe Runelords book. What is it? Sorry—you'll have to wait!

ShadowcatX wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

ShadowcatX wrote:

Second, why do you not have the lovely little subscriber tag if you're a loyal pathfinder subscriber?

You don't need a subscription to subscribe to something. Some people cannot afford automatic payments and have to pick and choose what they can afford.

Welcome to the English language where a person no longer needs a subscription to be one who subscribes. . .

All my subscriber tags vanished when I changed my default alias so that folks didn't confuse me for that Brock.

Yeah, because aliases are commonly used for PBP characters, we only show subscriber tags on the primary alias.

However, as there is no option for us to say "this post is a mess and we can't suss out exactly what you're asking," it's possible it may have been marked answered-in-FAQ to purge it from the list (otherwise it would sit in the list forever... the only options for clearing flags are "answered in FAQ," "answered in errata," "not an error/no staff response needed," and "create new FAQ entry for this") with the expectation that a clearer version of the question is in the queue.

We could create a "question unclear" flag... or any other flag that you think helps you do your job!

There's so much passive-aggressive crap in the last couple of pages that I can't even tell what to moderate out apart from the obvious personal insults and the replies that quote them.

This thread is a trainwreck; I'm locking it. Feel free to start over, but only if you treat each other like the intelligent human beings I know you all are.

Glad to see he has such an open mind.

Hey, he's 83 years old... why should he start now?

I've done some further cleanup. This is not the time or place, yellowdingo.

Amazon is terrible with respect to their release date listings for our products. They'll probably update their date when they get their stock in a week or two.

richard develyn wrote:

And I'm more than happy to open up a debate about magic, like resurrection spells and the like. I'm not goading - I find it interesting, and I don't think people ever think this through beyond the first hurdle.

I love discussing and thinking about such things too. But I would suggest you start another thread...as it is way off topic for this one.

Yeah, the discussion is pretty far off topic now.

The Beginner Box is intended to be a low-price, high-value product, so the profit margin is, by design, very slim... but it's not designed to lose money.

Vic Wertz wrote:

Dryder wrote:

I really loved the small FR books which were called "Volo's Guide to "X"".

Those were awesome. Such books for Golarion - instant buy!

See here, for what I mean.

Hey! Lisa and I were two of the three editors on that book. (I have learned so much since then...)

That you've learned so much since then does mean what? That you think those books are great, or rather not?! Do you think such a product would be a possibility for Golarion/Paizo? :)

Mainly, I meant that I'm a much better editor now.

My thought on Volo's Guides in particular is that there probably aren't that many people who want entire cities detailed all the way down to individual menu items in each tavern. Personally, I'd rather give you broader strokes, plus a few examples of specific things that you can adapt for your own uses.

Taking the "menu" example, I'd rather not give you the menu for the Rusty Dragon in Sandpoint; I'd rather we instead tell you what a typical tavern menu in Varisia is, and then maybe a bit about how it varies from place to place. A page that tells me something about *most* taverns is more useful to me than a page that tells me everything about *one* tavern.

Silly Majuba, I've always been in the know. It's why they hired me ;-)

I knew there had to be some reason...

Mark Moreland wrote:

I am also not wealthy enough to buy 41 of them. I added them to my shopping cart, but I haven't submitted the order yet. Still anticipating the uncomfortable questions my wife will pose were I to make such a large purchase without at least mentioning it to her first. ;-)

$123 for a bunch of empty boxes...

How could that not go well?

;)

Just start leaving the 738 individual tiles scattered around the house, and soon enough, she'll *insist* you buy the boxes!