fray's page

Hey all,

There is now a new way to get your money back for any purchases you made from Nick Logue's Sinister Adventures.

Email your request to bgmcubed@gmail.com

I expect to be able to start sending people their money back by the end of the month. I will update everyone here if there are any delays to the start of that process. Money will be refunded in the order requests are received. Everyone who wants their money back can get it.

I extend Nick's apologies if you've already emailed and need to email a second time.

IN THE INTERESTS OF FULL DISCLOSURE
===================================
I need to let everyone who purchased know that there is a tiny, tiny possibility that I might be able to put out Razor Coast for Nick. If I do it will be more expensive than the pre-order price, by a significant factor. The book got a LOT bigger under my development. One of the primary issues preventing this is recovering the art from Nick's crashed hard drive and/or getting his artist's to resend it, years later.

Am I committing publishing RC as this time? NO. Absolutely, not.

WHY ARE YOU DISCLOSING THIS?
============================
If you don't get your money back, and I do put this out you get RC for whatever price you originally paid.

If you do get your money back, and then (by some miracle of personal goodness) decide later that you want RC anyway, you'll have to pay full price. Whatever that is at the time.

If is a tiny little word with a really big meaning, but IF I can help Nick in this way, I don't want anyone to feel they got fooled or ripped off.

Again, this is NOT any kind of promise to release RC in any shape or fashion, whatsoever.

But I have to make you aware of this possibility, now, even if the chances are fairly small. Transparency is important. Anything else would be dishonest.

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO GET MY MONEY BACK NOW?
============================================
I've been working with the Logue to help him recover from a computer disaster and otherwise get his ducks in a row.

He agreed -- and did -- release to my management his email and paypal accounts from Sinister Adventures, solely for the purposes of processing return transactions on his behalf.

I'VE WAITED THIS LONG, WHY ANOTHER #$%&#! MONTH?
================================================
What I've got is a giant stack of thousands of unsorted emails across multiple years -- many filled with understandably inventive imprecations -- plus a few years of PayPal statements. I've hired a temporary assistant to sort everything. He starts next week. Then I've pre-arranged extra hours for my bookkeeper to stay on top of payments. And I've got to make sure they do everything right and don't miss anything. It's an extra project I wasn't planning on, and it's going to take a while to get all set. Sorry.

WHY NOW?
=========
I would like Nick to survive Paizocon with all his body parts reasonably intact. He'll have a hard enough time surviving his mud wrestling match with Rich Pett. Pett + a pitchfork mob VS. Logue? No way. He'd never win.

And I only recently had the idea.

And it took me a while to work up the courage to offer him my help with this.

DOES THIS MEAN YOU, LOU, OWE ME THE MONEY?
==========================================
No. Nick owes you. Always did, always will. I did not buy Sinister's accounts from him. I have no legal obligation to anyone for the money. I am not and have never been an employee of Sinister. I was a freelancer. Now I'm a payment processor. Think of me as an unpaid freelance bookkeeper handling the mechanical and accounting steps of refunding people's money. I'm just helping a friend (finally) do right by the community.

WHAT THE HECK DOES BGMCUBED MEAN?
=================================
Figure that out, and I will shower you with accolades. :)

I'm sure there are questions I didn't address: please fire away.

Dear Paizo Fans,

First off let me apologize for my long absence from the Internet. I don’t use it for anything beyond work email these days and I am about as far out of the electronic loop as is humanly possible – my own fault, and my undoing on many levels.

I deeply apologize for the debacle that was Sinister Adventures – I can honestly say there has been nothing in my life I regret more than attempting to run my own publishing company. I have done severe damage to my own finances over the past several years, ruined my reputation as a game designer, and transformed a hobby that used to be the most enjoyable part of my life into my own personal mire of misery and shame. But most importantly I have alienated a host of lovely people who love RPGS. I used to take great joy in communicating with my former fans, and felt a growing camaraderie with several of the people who enjoyed my work, or even hated my work, but just downright enjoyed this great hobby. I let those people down, betrayed them, and damaged their enthusiasm for the game, not to mention lost the hard-earned money they entrusted to me through pre-orders.

I dealt with the avalanche of problems Sinister experienced ineptly to say the least. The failure of this company combined with crushing stress from my 90 hour-a-week day job of the last three years shook the foundation of my sense of self. This led to a downward spiral of alcoholism and depression.

My recent move back to Hawaii has restored a great deal of the vitality and psychological well-being I lost over the last few years and I am finally in a place to take serious action against the start-up gaming company that has become my personal nemesis.

I have lost over $15,000 personally on this endeavor through my gross ineptitude as a publisher. I paid for a great deal of top quality art, web design and other start up costs and then as problems arose that siphoned off more funds, I found the company wallowing in destitution. As the problems piled up, I eventually lost any ability to deal with them and kept attempting to tell myself I would “get around to it soon” once I was able to save up more funds and free up more time. I grappled with the idea of bankruptcy, but didn’t want to end up not giving those who trusted me their money back.

Fortunately I have been able to shift some funds around recently and replenish Sinister’s coffers enough to get everyone their money back. To ensure this happens in a timely fashion I will not trust my own dire worthlessness with the task. Instead the heroic Lou is once again stepping up to bat.

Through the invaluable assistance of Louis Agresta – one of the truest friends a man could ask for – I am now in a position to refund all and sundry for their pre-orders to Sinister. Lou has very kindly offered to assist me yet again, this time pooling through my mangled attempts at record keeping to ensure all of you who have not yet been refunded get your money returned.

Lou has posted instructions and details above.

Now allow me to move off my own dire failures as a businessman and human being and move on to a more salient point.

Paizo Publishing is a true gem - A company full of caring individuals who are entirely the opposite of Sinister Adventures. They care deeply about their fans, their authors, and the hobby. From my close contact with them for years, first as a rabid fan and aspiring writer, then as a go-to freelancer, then as a brief employee I have a unique view of the fine people of Paizo inside and out. They are compassionate, professional, creative, enthusiastic, and possessed of a deep well of forgiveness and generosity. They don’t just uphold high standards of how companies should operate – they set the standards as far as I’m concerned.

It hurts me deeply that their remarkable feat of kindness and an attempt to rehabilitate the degenerate hobbyist and writer I have become over the last few years could result in any sort of backlash. These fine upstanding people pour their love, blood and sweat into their company daily.

To those of you hurt by the Sinister fiasco: I implore you to keep the sights of your (righteous) anger focused entirely on me. I will happily give ample opportunity for those of you slighted (or worse) by my mistakes and failures a chance to redress the wrongs you suffered at Sinister (and my) hands. I will gladly listen to your anger, apologize, and try to make amends as best I can at Paizocon. I will attempt to run games for those of you who suffered from Sinister’s flop, languishing in limbo while awaiting news or refunds from me.

I humbly apologize for the long and resounding silence and for thinking I could get things back on the rails.

Thank you for your time and patience. Please follow the instructions and details Lou posted above on how to FINALLY get your money back.

Yours,

Nicolas Logue

If the group is dividing money evenly, sharing the spoils of adventure together, why charge for services? Does you character need the money that badly? Can't you just borrow for an item and then repay it?

the whole concept goes against playing as a group. if my group holds out stuff from me or charges me for services, that just inspires me to do the same. breeds unhealthy attitutes imho.

That pretty much accurately sums up one entire side of the argument.

-S

Actually, when you replace a class feature such as the first Hex, Arcana, Discovery, etc, you don't count as having the class feature.

Ultimate Magic, pg 14, under Alternate Class Features wrote:

A character who takes an alternate class feature does not count as having the class feature that was replaced for the purposes of meeting any requirements or pre-requisites.

Edit: To be clearer, You don't technically replace the hex class feature. You postpone it's acquisition. You don't have the Hex class feature if you don't have a hex.

OK, so you are saying the developers deliberately created two witch archetypes which keep witches from using feats to gain hexes until level 2. I simply don't believe that was their intent. If so it's a stupid intent. "Let's create witch archetypes that aren't even witches until level 2!"

Stupid.

Since I've already played my witch at level 1 without the archetype (the archetypes were released when he was level 2) and the GM allowed us to revise our characters to use archetypes, I'll just say he waited until level 2 to use his first level feats.

I'd love a developer weigh in on this. I can't believe they deliberately gimped two witch archetypes in this way. If they did, I'd like them to explain what makes these two archetypes so awesome at level 1 that it justifies removing their core class ability at that level.

IMO, the best reward for good roleplaying is more opportunities for good roleplaying.

My suggestion is don't do it.

People will tend to play the type of game that they enjoy. If you are punishing them instead of helping them have fun... well, I am not sure that sounds like an enjoyable game.

And I know that there are a lot of people who like to reward good RP with XP, but it doesn't make sense to me. Again, if people are playing in a way they don't enjoy what is the point? Are you just trying to get people who care about XP only to game your way?

For me... RP is it's own reward. If you and other players at the table are RPing and it looks fun it will draw the others in or it just isn't their thing. If you don't want to play with people who don't enjoy the exact same aspects of the game then move on.

I know this comes across a little harsh, and I am sorry for that, it isn't my intent to single you out but more rail against a trend I have seen.

Sean Mahoney

They so MAD that not even Zon-Kuthon wants them.

They are so MAD that Lamasthu is loving them soooo much.

They so MAD that not even Zon-Kuthon wants them.

Just for fun, I decided to go through various PF products and compile a list of languages.

Are there any that I'm missing? Also, I'm not sure if "Gug" is still its own language. It's noted as a separate language in Into the Darklands, yet in Bestiary II, gugs simply speak Undercommon. Thus I'm assuming Gug is no longer a language.

As promised earlier today in the other thread, I've uploaded my conversions for Crown of Fangs. Rather than continue in that thread (unfortunately titled as just Escape conversions), I created a new one.

Edge of Anarchy (beta rules)
Seven Days to the Grave (beta)
Escape from Old Korvosa
A History of Ashes
Skeletons of Scarwall
Crown of Fangs

Quite possibly too late now for anyone to use it, but you never know when someone decides to raid the archives for a module, right?

Maybe if I get the time later, I'll do some editing and revisit the early modules as well. Would people be interested in that?