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Gnomes of Golarion! Make it so!

GNOME BOOK!

Do it!

The original Buffy movie is so painful. So ... much ... camp.

Truthfully, I'd rather someone discovered another box of the Magic Box supplement somewhere. I can make up Sunnydale if I wanted to. The magic rules, though, haven't appeared anywhere else in Cinematic Unisystem. :(

I would say it's the mirror image of what's happened here. 4E is a divisive issue, and like the (idiotic) video game wars, the loudest people have divided themselves into camps and have spent a lot of energy denigrating the choice (or even mere preferences) of those in the "enemy" camp.

The situation at ENWorld was made worse by the well-meaning decision to move 4E discussion into its own forum, which allowed the two camps to have a hothouse environment where they tended to only hear from people they agreed with. And now, they've been dumped back into the same forum together, and, not surprisingly, everyone is acting like a bunch of cats in a sack, clawing and biting at each other.

ENWorld has gone through cycles like this before, and it gets over it. Part of the issue is that there's a LOT of people who are either not regular posters or are new posters, neither of whom are socialized to the normally very aggressive standard of moderation, and the resulting chaos has meant a lot of scrambling for the mods.

To be fair, though, the situation is worse at WotC's boards and there aren't a lot of 4E-friendly or even 4E-agnostic threads here at Paizo.

Singling out ENWorld on this matter seems off-base to me: What's going on there is just indicative of how online fandom in general is reacting to 4E -- with slap fights.

Eden lost this license about a year ago. This product is never coming.

I could give a whit less about the flavor changes - if I don't like it, I'll just change it back to the way I like it. I am curious if their promises of easier to prep & run will come true.

My campaign climax will feature, essentially, two (or more) armies crashing together in the middle of the PCs' hometown, with lots of combat with troops, several prominent NPCs and a big summoned apocalyptic monster. It will be a complete pain to do in 3E. If 4E really does make that easier, I'll be a happy camper indeed.

Well it would kind of help if the old school of magic existed. But ummm, ... WotC kind of ... dumped that, like completely, like nothing even similar remains. So Paizo is going to have to do a FR change to their setting if they want to use ... this.

While I don't love the loss of spell schools (it makes converting my illusionist a pain until the arcane book comes out, allegedly in late 2008), I agree that the Runelords using "old" magic is a pretty good fit, actually.

As for my gnome illusionist/bard, I guess that's what retraining rules will be for.

Mark me down as another one who finds this as my favorite wondrous item so far. This has a real monkey paw vibe for me. I'll likely be dropping this into my Freeport game.

This is sold out already? Wow! I blinked and missed it, which is a shame, since this is among my very favorite 1E modules. Hopefully there will be more forthcoming.

My name is one of the long list of contributors on the cover of the Koboldnomicon, which is published by Bards & Sages via Lulu. In most places, it's only available softcover (or as a PDF), but given that it's Lulu, there are hardcovers out there with my name on it. (I have one of them.)

Am I ineligible?

I definitely want to hear some more details, but this sounds pretty darn neat. Should we be basing our country in your world, or is generic OK? And ditto on the format questions.

And is the lucky winner the one who gets to write the last 3.5 GameMastery module before 4E comes out? :p

Well I agree that its extremely doubtful that the 4.0 OGL would force 3rd party publishers to use WotC fluff... I can easily see them having a 200+ long list of monsters (and maybe playable races/class lists too) that 3rd parties are not allowed to use under the OGL, thereby reserving them for WotC use in future PHB/MM books. (ie. As Frost Giants, Gnomes and Barbarians are commonly assumed to not be in the launch books... they would be on a list that prohibited names that aren't allowed to be used)

Besides, none of those are remotely WotC IP.

There already are 3E alternatives out there. Instead of asking Green Ronin to support yet another system, why not go with True20? It's already out there, has good support, and has supplements that allow one to duplicate a whole lot of classic D&D elements.

If not True20, C&C is also out there and well established and has classic D&D feel as its whole reason for being.

I don’t believe they’ve even started playtesting…

TSR can't attract new players (and sell product) to the game in numbers that sastisfy the bean counters so here is the great idea, assume that those that already own the game are chumps and force them to re-purchase it!

*shakes fist*

Slaughtering "sacred cows" that aren't broke feels to people like they are arbitrary decisions. I don't believe that they are "arbitrary", but they are still a bit weak on their explanations of "why". And without adequate explanation, it feels "arbitrary" because none of us were included on the decision making and the default "reason" ends up being "change for its own sake".

Since those changes will apparently include nixing the gnome, the bard and even illusionists from the PHB, please don't read this as me saying I'm exactly cheering the sacred cow slaughterfest. But their track record makes me believe that Races & Classes in December will explain their apparent desire to make me personally cry, by making even reimagining my gnome illusionist/bard nigh-impossible for months or even years after 4E first hits shelves.

Sometimes I just feel WotC doesn't care if it poops all over a large fraction of its older audience if it means they can push boxes and boxes of plastic nonsense on rich young kids whose parents will shell out 20 gp everytime the child needs a fix.

Agreed. It's pointless to have a Pathfinder PHB to just recreate 4E.

For what it's worth, a 4E Pathfinder adventure with the same page count will have more adventure in it than a 3.X one, simply because of the different stat blocks. (We've seen one stat block now, for one of the devils.)

So the people saying they'll stop buying Pathfinder if it goes 4E might want to reconsider. While there will still be converting to do (although if the community is as passionate then as they are now, there should be no lack of people willing to post said conversions), you'll get more adventure overall this way.

Just look at what the stat blocks look like in the final chapter of Savage Tide and imagine a large portion of that replaced with actual adventure content instead.

(This isn't to say anything about 4E is good or bad, just that smaller stat blocks mean more room for other stuff in Pathfinder.)

From an economic standpoint, is there a reason the third Pathfinder AP has to be started immediately after the last one? Why not just put it on hold for a few months and fill the channel with additional GameMastery modules?

Or is Pathfinder a huge chunk of Paizo's bottom line?

When offering suggestions to Paizo as to what they should do, may I ask one thing of the posters: Pretend it was your money. That might not change your opinions, but it certainly should inform them.

I think you're going to hear from a lot of diehard fans here who may not, ultimately, accurately represent your entire base of customers.

If I were you, I'd plan on 4E. I know you're in regular contact with the Necromancer guys, and I think they have the right of it: Write for the Saga Edition, essentially, and odds are, you'll be pretty close to where you need to be when you finally get the rules. Worst case scenario, you issue a sincere (and understandable) mea culpa and put up errata online immediately.

Because sticking with the old version isn't going to work, no matter how great your product is, no matter how the hardcore may say otherwise (unless they each vow to buy 100 books each). Just look at how poorly the truly outstanding Redhurst Academy of Magic did, as it came out as a 3E purchase the same week as 3.5 hit.

All the oxygen is going of the room for 3E, whether or not anyone likes it. I think it's a bad idea to continue to sell to a market that won't really be there in sufficient numbers.

I love the blog, but I'd like to see more previews like we got for the first Pathfinder volume. I want goblin preview-style posts for the dominant monster in each volume. Where is my ghoul fluff? I want ogre fluff! And more goblin songs, always more goblin songs!

Wow, you can't ask for better service than that. Thanks!

Where would you set U1 in Ptolus? Would you move the module wholesale into Rivergate or the Noble District (or elsewhere), or divide the locations up among several districts in the City by the Spire?

Has anyone made a plug-in to search Paizo's store catalog from the Firefox search bar? I use my Amazon one all the time.

I can't argue with ghouls getting the spotlight first!

Especially since they will paralyze me and eat me alive if I do ...

I'm starting to plan out an adventure with ogres, and as a big, big fan of Paizo's goblins, and knowing there are ogres in the first Pathfinder AP, I was wondering if there was any chance we could get an ogre fluff preview on the blog.

I've got some fluff I'm using -- going back to fairy tales and having the half-human daughter of an ogre be a beautiful, if tall, apparently human protagonist in an adventure -- but would love some more.

Magic Eight-Ball says "outlook not so good."

Creating a big honking hardcover book and getting it back in time from the printers in time to sell enough of them to a dwindling market of people who are still buying heavy-duty 3.5E crunch is a pretty big financial gamble, IMO. I wouldn't count on Necromancer/Paizo going for it, although they know the numbers better than I do, obviously.

I don't like the temptation of games on my laptop (which is for writing), so I tend to limit my gaming to my Playstation and XBox 360.

(Mwah ha ha ha!)

Flying Talon

This light exotic piercing weapon consists of a three-pronged barbed hook attached to a length of chain.

I've ordered this, but since I've got it bundled with The Pirate's Guide to Freeport, it won't be arriving for a week or two.

In the interim, could someone give me the name and physical description -- but not the stats -- of the new spiked chain-like weapon detailed in this module? I've got a kobold champion about to put the smack down on a gnome player character.

Thanks.

This would obviously be a wildly intelligent product to publish.

Yeah, it's a DCC miniature. Of course it's old school style: That's the whole point of the DCC line.

Barbarians get a prestige class that lets them turn into a pissed-off dire bear.

Why would they need two prestige classes?

You know, if ever there was a reason to bring the Tome of Horrors back into print, in color, having it be once again one of the first monster books available of a new edition would be it.

So, how about it?

Based on today's blog, I have to say, Curchanus sounds like a great god for a druid, especially one seeking to return humanity and animals to their previous legendary harmony.

Maybe it's about why the heck there are EXPLODING COWS in Neverwinter Nights...?

Cows, though, just exploded if you kept on clicking the poor creatures.

Naturally, this did not dissuade people from doing it.

I wonder how well this would link up with Goodman Games' Vault of the Dragon Kings, which is a similar idea but is presumably a little higher in level (and is a tournament module besides, so it's even tougher).

Crossbowmen? I'd say more like spearmen, myself. One, long, paintbrush-shaped spear, in fact.

What about my sammich?

Seconded.

We're working on it!

Make me a sandwich!

What do you mean by "throwaway" setting? I mean, both D0 and D1 are set in and around Falcon's Hollow, so it makes sense that it should have some depth. Or did I totally misunderstand what you're saying? (Entirely possible). :-)

Without knowing what's on your game shelf, I can't point to specific examples, but if you've bought a module in the last six years, you have these kinds of throwaway towns in them. Arguably, this makes them more, well, modular, but it also gives lower value for the dollar out of the module itself.

You gotta like it when the "throwaway" setting has enough hooks to run multiple games in, instead of the towns in modules from multiple otherwise-excellent companies that are pretty much devoid of all hooks, and just serve as a rest and refuel station for adventurers.

It's nice to see a product with this sort of optional-but-appreciated polish!

You officially have too many things I want to purchase for me to afford at one time. A wishlist would let me buy affordable chunks while still keeping the list of all the other goodies I want to buy ...

Oh MaxSlasher - thank you for that. I just relived a bit of my youth, though the animation quality was somewhat less than I remembered :-)

Mmmhm. There just aren't enough capybaras in day to day roleplaying.

I haven't heard the song in years, I'm most likely remembering the closest reproduction of the actual words my brain can come up with.

Where there's a whip there's a way
Where's there's a whip there's a way.
Where there's a whip,
We don't wanna go to war today,
There's a way,
Where's there's a whip,
But the Lord of the lash says nay nay nay.
There's a way.
We're gonna march all day, all day all day.
For where there's a whip, theres a way.
Where there's a whip, there's a way.
Where there's a whip There's a way.
Where there's a whip There's a way.
Left, right, left, right, left.
Where's there's a whip, there's a way.
Left, right.
The crack on the back says we're gonna march
Says were gonna march all day all night
And more.
For we are the slaves of the dark lord's lore
Left right, left right, left right.
Where there's a whip there's a way.
Where there's a whip there's a way.
Where there's a whip,
We don't wanna go to war today.
There's a way,
Where's there's a whip,
But the Lord of the lash says nay nay nay
There's a way
We're gonna march all day all day all day
Where there's a whip there's a way.
Left right, left right left right left right
Left right Left right, left right, left right,
Left right, left right, left right.

So much love for the Internet.