It's Christmas morning in New Zealand... My darling wife gifted me a Pathfinder plastic mini of a Hodag because she knows I miss Wisconsin sometimes.
In two weeks (November 18th), a new public venue for Pathfinder Society will be opening its doors. Three tables are currently slated and the event can be found on Warhorn for RSVP sign-up. Orakei RSA, Upstairs room, 178 Kepa Road, Orakei.
Auckland's PFS community has grown so much in the last year- we just concluded a very successful mini-con called Waypoint. Come and join in the fun in Orakei!
Year of Leng: Rifts are opening up. Strange discordances in reality are tearing open across the Inner Sea and only the Pathfinder Society has the means to stop the instability before entire regions are torn asunder. Anyone who falls within a rift is never heard from again. Will the Society develop a plan to venture beyond the dark rifts and reason with the alien presence beyond? (Fetchlings) I would like to see a season featuring more Dark Tapestry content... a cult of Dagon in the Shackles for example. The locations can be all over Golarion (including Tian Xia and the Tapestry), but with the common theme that *something* out there is watching and waiting... for the stars to be right.
(eyeing scenario front page) "Well, looks like this is a Baird scenario... how much prestige does everyone have saved up?" (eyeing boxed text intro) "Well, looks like Osprey is sending you on a mission... how much prestige does everyone have saved up?" (after a brief pause) "Well, looks like Baird chose Osprey for this one... (sigh) on the bright side, we will get a break for a snack before the next slot of games. Let's roll dice..."
Has anyone suggested that instead of treating people as "untrained" for these skill checks (when they don't have the Technologist feat) that the DCs are simply 5-10 higher for these checks? I think a +10 DC to decipher technology hundreds of years more advanced than your own is a a pretty appropriate modifier. If a PC is the Golarion equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci, she should at least have a chance to figure out the rudimentary working bits. :-)
Shardra is a great iconic... and Kolo, well, I'm going to petition our NZ VOs to adopt the awesome Kolo as our official mascot.
Walter, one of the great things about PFS and the forum community here is that anyone can state what changes they would like to see in organized play policy. I understand the pros and cons to these arguments, but hearing a VC attempting to shut a thread down by saying "...there's no reason in discussing anything further regarding race boons for people that don't participate in convention play." is the kind of "love it or leave it" response that makes organizers feel under-valued. Having spent a fair amount of time in the corporate world- every time a company performs a culture survey (often to try to find out where the problematic areas are in the organization) there are always persistent issues that crop up that "the little people"* are unhappy about. In organizations where upper management are out of touch or just plain don't care, are shown this over and over again and their responses are very similar to what I am hearing from you- "well, that's not going to change so let's just move on as it is non-issue". This is the kind of thinking that results in high-turnover, shoddy work by employees who don't feel valued and an overall malaise that undermines strategic goals of the company. *by "little people", I refer to the people who are not in the top 10-15% of the org chart. Yes, this is a tired argument (its been going on for a very long time by my reckoning). Race boons have been a sore-spot for people for a long time... especially those people who don't go to conventions (and the reasons for that are many and varied). Regardless of the argument, let's not try to shut it down with blanket statements... obviously PFS can't please everyone all the time, but it doesn't hurt to talk about possible changes.
Finally saw my own item. I feel like I can rest now... will try to come back to vote more later.
It's morning in NZ, Tally Ho! Hm. Well, sham-wow is at least a practical use of magic... and a better choice than the other item. upvote
Next year I should submit an item that shoots meteor swarms at anyone carrying (or creating)an item to do with turtles, hamsters, or detached body parts. *Next* year I am submitting an item that compares two other wondrous items and tells you if either of them is worth voting for... and makes drinks for you whilst it does so.
ugh... voted against the same item about 20 times now... but, sure enough, there was something out there worse that finally forced me to upvote it.
I have become slightly afraid each time the page loads with new items that one of them will be a "Torc Scabbard".
I've been voting for almost two hours and following the guidelines presented in this thread... It's been helping immensely.
Is it a story of lust? of intrigue? of revenge? I can only hope for all the above. Marquis Kaleb Blackthorne will be in attendance with his companion, Sierra Vadalis- priestess of Daikitsu. I can't help but wonder how that old theater (the one behind the Golden Cathedral) was requisitioned... what strings were pulled there, I wonder?
Ever since GMing The Harrowing for my group a year or so ago, I have always thought it would be great to have Crystal Frasier as a GM for a non-PFS sanctioned game; letting her go "off the rails" creativity-wise and let her expand that module to her heart's desire.
This is my wife, Helene... She worked very hard on this in addition to all the work we've been doing in preparation for our move out of country. She is a great GM and I'm a lucky guy. We actually met at GenCon in 2009.
Woo woo, three virgin planets for humans to convert into landfills!
Rats of Round Mountain Part I Our party came to a collapsed tunnel that needed clearing for us to proceed. The Paladin turned to us and said, "No problem, I can use my adamant earthbreaker and we'll be through in no time." My witch responded with saying "while you're digging, why don't you take your shirt off so you don't over-heat?" and another female character offered to "lube the Paladin" if he did so. He modestly declined the offer. Well, after he broke his way through the collapsed wall... Spoiler:
a pair of gugs attacked him, one of them grappling him quite effectively with it's four arms... and once grappled, THEN the Paladin started yelling "lube me! lube me!".
Hmmm... just had an idea. What if these boons were purchasable on the Paizo website for very little- say $1? Then nobody could "cry foul" as it were (unless they had less than a dollar to their name, and I am not even going to comment on that) that they are unfairly distributed... PFS VCs could still give out boons at Cons or large Game Days that qualify under whatever rules are established. A plus is that the purchased boons could be watermarked similar to other PDFs. I am sure there are dozens of ways to abuse this approach- but there always are ways to cheat if folks want to.
I followed the other thread and after thinking about it quite a bit have landed on the "keep it banned" side of the fence. Just because it is in the Core rulebook (which was designed for any Pathfinder game, btw, not organized play in particular) doesn't mean it is above being banned from PFS. Comparing raise dead to permanency is not exactly comparing apples to apples- I understand you consider it "iconic", but there are restrictions applied to all classes in the cases where a particular ability might cause unbalanced situations. After reading the other thread, I side with not having to deal with the possible abuses of permanency... my 2cp, but that is my personal preference. Also, I am with Bob on *really* being against modifying the spell to make it organized play legal.
Eric, my wife and I are also playing a Kitsune couple right now- she is an Oracle of Daikitsu and I am running a Cavalier (order of the Star) charged with protecting her as her bodyguard. This is the first time we have played a "couple" in game and its been fun so far. :-) And no, we are not furries. (Not that it should matter, really... but that is all people seem focused on when the word Kitsune comes up.)
@nosig- yup, it definitely seems to be a case of "let's demonize the functional alcoholic" (who happens to do a pretty decent job of taking care of the kids, who would be on the street otherwise). If you had to wrangle that many street urchins day in, day out you would drink too. However, I think that is exactly what makes that encounter shine... it is not totally clear if something is really wrong there- there are shades of gray. I think that is what makes it memorable and I don't want to see it cut. Any chance we could just re-vamp the First Steps series by removing the acts with references to cut VCs and inserting new ones? Oh, and one more thing... children working seems appropriate for a quasi medieval setting... how young do you think kids are when they start helping out on family farms these days anyway?
My response to the original poster's question: You shouldn't and if you roll in the open (which I do), you keep yourself from being tempted to do so. I can think of at least a couple of times (maybe a couple more that I can't think of just off the top of my head) in the 40 some-odd games I have run for PFS where I purposefully chose sub-optimal tactics because not doing so would have resulted in a TPK.
In the company where I work there is an interesting phenomena occurring... at meetings, it is becoming more and more frowned upon to bring laptops to meetings because many people are working on things not related to the meeting's topic (and thus aren't paying attention). Oddly, people are starting to bring tablets instead and there is much less negative reaction to it. My observation is that they are more accepted even though they (the tablets) are distracting the attendee from the meeting at hand just as much. It's hard to peg down why this is so- but a theory I have is that a tablet can be laid down flat on the table and as such doesn't act as a screen- which could be seen as a subconscious cue to others as disconnection from the meeting. When someone is hunkered down behind a "screen up" laptop, there is a kind of implied separation of attention/activity... even of "hiding something". It's a very subtle thing, but that is what I think I am seeing. My advice is that if your GM does allow you to use your laptop at the table, try to find ways to show you are still paying attention as much as possible- and if possible try to minimize the opposing "screen of disconnection" as much as possible.
My opinions: Laptops: Ok, as long as they are not creating real estate problems for other players (i.e. a 17" Alienware behemoth is not welcome)
*I #$%^ing cannot stand it when players are texting, playing game apps, or otherwise messing around on their cellphones at a table. I had a case of this just this last weekend. I think this falls into the "as long as they have their head in the game" category. Can't stand having to re-explain everything to these distracted players over and over again- it's burdensome to everyone at the table.
I was recently told a story (yes, that makes it hearsay) from a friend who played a scenario wherein the GM had removed some encounters and had completely replaced the second part of the scenario with a weird melange of modified versions of the combats in a completely different place. After he played the scenario, he read it in anticipation of GMing it at an upcoming game day... and found that he had been *bamboozled*! His experience of the scenario was not what other Pathfinder players would experience and so he was robbed of that shared experience we have when comparing notes as players about previously experienced scenarios. "What?!? There were no flying monkeys in that combat! Not when I played it." This is a really good reason for not fudging the modules- one GM might fudge it a tiny bit, others will completely re-write the darn thing.
IF this story is true I have one question for many of the Venture Captains and for Michael Brock: Why would someone like this be allowed to remain in society? This is someone who is blatantly killing people for kicks. IMO people like this need to be loudly and publicly ejected from the society. This makes the whole society look bad. If you know the people involved, you should tell them if they feel unfairly and maliciously treated by this GM, they certainly should complain to their local VC about it. Otherwise, it is hearsay and not actionable imo. There is almost always more to stories like this. I can't help but wonder if the first TPK wasn't due to some bad choices by the party... which were subsequently repeated in the second iteration of the encounter. Or the GM could have had it in for them... or both... or who knows what else happened there. Like my father used to say, "There are three sides to every story- his side, her side and the truth."
My only regret about MegaCon was that I should have GM'ed one more table of an Intro scenario... I am 2 tables short of three stars and it would have been nice to have achieved that at the Con. :-| I just didn't realize it at the time. Honestly, Central Florida is blessed with some really wonderful organizers and the quality of gaming at MegaCon (as well as this past Dice Tower) is something you should all be proud of.
Congratulations on your new position, Ryan!
And drinking scotch is indeed an awesome game! Doesn't matter if you win or lose, just play it like you mean it! (and ignore those desperate cries of your liver...)
I would hazard to say an "average" encounter is 2-3 rounds if the party is well-preppared. That said, 1 round is not totally uncommon, nor are ones in the 5-8 range if the encounter is particularly tough. Rarely have I seen encounters go beyond 8 rounds and if they do, well, it usually means the PCs are getting the worst end of it.
Opens box. Stealth weasel "face biter" springs into action. "Stealth weasel" has me wondering how much a fitted, weasel ninja outfit would cost. Awesome thread!
Reading over the "gunslingers aren't so bad if you enforce all the restrictions around their actions" posts... maybe it is the idea that I have to spend most of my GM time/effort catering to micro-managing one player's actions instead of tending to the needs of the rest of the players that rubs me the wrong way.
If you are just starting out with a new group my advice would be to pick up "The Godsmouth Heresy", a module that will cost you about twice the cost of a scenario but will easily fill two sessions worth of time. It is a level 1 module. I would combine this with City of Strangers parts I & II and take your time figuring out the best way to combine them such that for the first 4-5 sessions of your PFS campaign, the PCs remain in Kaer Maga. You could supplement the experience by picking up the City of Srangers supplement for the city itself. I would probably start the characters off with part I, sending them from Absalom on their very first mission for the PF Society. After part I, do Godsmouth Heresy while they are still level 1. After Godsmouth Heresy, they should have 4XP and be level 2 for part II of City of Strangers. (Assuming you are doing this for PFS organized play.) I suggest this approach because Kaer Maga is a memorable setting and it allows you to delve more into it all at once.
I'm one of the GMs who ran this for Fromper's group. All I have to say is that "I <3 Gugs"... one of my favorite old CoC monsters making an appearance is awesome (and I hope to see more! Mr. Baird, may I suggest a big juicy Dhole for the next one?). I had thought about having the dragon flee with the valuable magic weapon she had snagged, but at the time she wasn't below the 40 hit point threshold to retreat, so being a greedy little monster, she was hoping to score one more item prior to absconding. Turned out to be her undoing, as Fromper pointed out, as the team did a massive amount of damage in that single round and she plummeted. I really want to convey that even though both scenarios in this series are mechanically challenging, it's the story-line and introduction of the rat-folk (and their history) that I really liked (both as a player and GM). It really makes me want to know more about Hao Jin.
Nanny Ogg would a priceless character to draw upon for inspiration. She may be "long in the tooth", but she has plenty of spunk in her yet- no reason why you can't play your witch off the same way. My witch has Profession(Matchmaker) and is always looking for ways to bring couples together. I could see a Nanny Ogg type character having that skill. Survival might be a skill she might have... if she is a rural witch.
If I were so sweet an innocent, it would not have happened. Josh, I have to give you real credit for being able to say that. Nobody wants to admit to the darker sides of their personality... when I was much younger, I had a close friend admit to me one day that she thought I always had an arrogant streak in me... which I hope I have since recognized and worked on- but I was shocked at the time. It was only my trust in my friend that caused me to take it seriously and work on that foible in my personality.
I feel both a little guilty and a little wronged here, personally I'm more upset on principle than anything else, the campaign was just feeling...tedious? I don't know, but I wasn't really having a lot of fun and just went as something to do, so I don't care as badly about being forced out as I possibly could be. Maybe my apathy contributed to my poor behavior? CommandoDude, considering the list of things you were accused of doing, I am surprised you are the one who feels "wronged". If you were unhappy with the quality of the game, then you should have talked with the GM directly about it. Using your "apathy" as an excuse for your behavior is pretty sad... accept responsibility for not contributing for food and ignoring your hosts' desire for you not to freely partake of their home's food. If you don't, odds are you will violate similar rules (spoken or unspoken) in your next gaming group. (And one more additional bit of advise, be aware of how *much* food you consume- I have had people who think nothing of polishing off entire bags of snacks, entire blocks of cheese, etc. at a single sitting while everyone else goes without...) I have had friends who have done similar things in the past and the resentment that can build up after repeat violations can get pretty strong- so while each infraction itself may seem "insignificant" to you, to the person offended it may have built up to be much more. Nobody likes to be told they are unwanted, but try to see this as a chance to change for the better and hopefully the next game group you join will appreciate your new-found abilities and mutual respect will result... and who knows, you may enjoy that next group more.
I am going to vote with the crowd that likes the B3 Catfolk artwork as well. This whole thread reminds me of "Cat" from Red Dwarf when he says, "I'm so excited, all six of my nipples are tingling."
DISCLAIMER- I am not the event organizer, but taking it upon myself to post the following for this event to get the ball rolling and drum up some interest. I have double-checked the information here for accuracy against the Oasis 25 website. OASIS 25
Convention is hosted by OASFiS (Orlando Area Science Fiction Society) A celebration of science fiction and fantasy including panel discussions, masquerade, video room, art show and auction, charity auction, dealer's room, filking, trivia contest, fannish craziness ……… and of course gaming!!! A wide range of gaming including several premiere events are available for your enjoyment. So whether you are a novice or seasoned player of one of the available various campaigns or events, there is a game just waiting for you! All you have to do is create or bring your character, role some dice and have fun! See the Warhorn site listed above for a huge list of Pathfinder events! COST
(This admission does include gaming) After registering for the convention, preregister for gaming by visiting http://warhorn.net/oasis25/ If you have any questions please contact Gerry Ruiz (gerryr88{at}gmail{dot}com). LOCATION
Mention OASIS to receive a special room rate of $79.00 per night for a
To volunteer to judge or for additional details, please contact Gerry Ruiz (gerryr88{at}gmail{dot}com). PLEASE NOTE: In the past, volunteers to judge four or more slots were comped the weekend membership to the convention. Hopefully Gerry will confirm this. Happy Gaming! WJ
Because a bard knows deep down what a flawed, pathetic person s/he really is and cannot break through the associated ennui enough to inspire themselves to do anything to improve their own situation. :-) Truly emo bards must make a Will save DC 10+(2x their own level) at the start of each adventure just to have the will to go out of the house. But seriously, performers do things to affect others- not themselves... I highly doubt a musician, actor, or artist derives the same pleasure/effect from their work that an observer does. The rule makes sense to me.
feytharn is right on about just not having the time to do everything the way you would "at home" or perfectly (where everyone is happy). As a True Dungeon DM I have had to cope with having just 12 minutes to get a group of players through a room... and these are strangers, you don't know their individual needs/expectations... so you do the best you can.
|
