roguerouge's page

Crown of the Kobold King, with its kid plot hook, will perfectly fit into your path as a side adventure later on down the line.

I can't tell you how happy this thread topic makes me after Hook Mountain Massacre...I never thought I'd see the day. :-)

Believe me, if James hadn't (wisely) removed Rolth's entourage of seriously f@~#ed up experiments from the Dead Warrens, this topic would read something like "Nick Logue is a Foul Blight on the Universe and Needs to be Erased From the Face of the Planet."

Those sick little puppies will find a home in Blood of the Gorgon. One more reason to sign up for Open Design ya'all! ;-)

What is this Open Design of which you speak? Link?

I'd like an expanded civilize the uncharted wilderness path. It's a huge gaping hole in the adventure modules. You just can't find it.

"The problem with this type of adventure is that since the gaming group is sitting down to game, the players know that there is going to be something wrong at the carnival. It is not like they would expect to play a session of actually strolling around the state fair. Because of that, it is pretty obvious where the future incidents will be happening."

Actually, in my campaign, spending an entire session on character-building happens frequently enough that this could work as a huge surprise.

I'm confused. Which are the modules and which are the setting supplements?

Anyone run this adventure? It looks great, but I'm wondering about a few things. How did you do the dinner party? How did you motivate the PCs to start searching the house? What clue-sticks did you hit your party with? What pitfalls should I avoid?

In my experience in high level campaigns, it does not matter how much damage a melee PC puts out: they're waiting for the wizard and CODzilla to win with one of their save or die effects. They come in handy when the inevitable anti-magic zones start showing up, but save or die effects are the only thing that's going to give high level fighters parity. And that solution just charges up some of the problems with high level play.

I like balancing it with the barbarian's DR, for flavor issues. A limited fast healing wouldn't be bad at all.

Well man only one person said you did but alot of us just hate self healing

Why? And why doesn't it make any difference if it's limited in such a manner as to be easily role-played as toughness, grit, and martial experience? My objection to the 4e "camping HP reset" is essentially that it makes describing combat injuries non-sensical. I haven't seen any explanation for how this causes the same problem.

Well, this has been productive and informative!

I'm glad that I made the effort to come to your community so that I could enjoy the reasoned debate on display here.

I have to say, the supportiveness to new comers found in discussing running the modules and pathfinder series is rather lacking here.

And, for the record, I don't play video games and I'm not switching to 4th edition.

Actually, it's based on LIMITING 3.5 edition's Dragon Shaman ability, not 4th edition, which I'm not a fan of to date.

A proposal: Have fighters and barbarians able to heal themselves up to half hit points after combats as a means of extending the PC party work day instead of adding more stuff for the casters to do.

It's simple. It's elegant. It balances the classes a bit more. It can be easily explained by the DM.

Yes, by all means, power creep the fighter. Give him more options, more skills, more to do at high levels. My experience of the melee build has been that it's very masochistic: stay in the front, let people beat on you, wait for the artillery spells to evaporate or tie up your enemy, then have the cleric complain at how your injuries are nerfing their powers and have the wizard whine about your bloodied body got in the way of him casting a juicy area of effect spell. And as an added bonus, you're more likely to die, because you face more attacks than anyone else in the party.

But why, for all that is holy, would you power creep the wizard?

My vote? Pseudodragons have evolved tiny breath weapons. In the campaign I DM, my PC has a pseudodragon who insists that he's a real dragon. Very big on a dragon's privileges. He desperately wants a real breath weapon to stop the teasing of the sorcerer.

And if he can scrape together enough XP, just one level of sorcerer would get this pseudodragon... burning hands!

James Jacobs wrote:

It never ceases to amaze me how something like a big sword throws the sense of disbelief right out the window, but people don't bat an eye at something like an elephant-sized spider or the concept of a monk being able to walk 3 times as fast as anyone else.

It's because they've already accepted that monstrous spiders and monks with supernatural powers are part of the world in which they are playing. To them, those things are "the rules" of how the world works. Our suspension of disbelief is based on what creators of a world tell us exist within that world. So long as the world is internally consistent we accept the fantastical things that happen there.

Elephant-sized spiders and super-fast monks are accepted as a part of D&D. A skinny girl with a super-large sword is not what many people consider to be D&D (or, for that matter, what has been visually established for Pathfinder). As such it is going to raise objections, especially from people who don't like anime (a major source of little people with big honkin' swords) or don't want anime in their D&D.

Suspension of disbelief requires consistency. If something doesn't feel like it is in the same world -- or reminds people of another world -- then their disbelief is broken.

Or, to put it another way: I can accept the great Cthulhu sleeping away the eons. I can't accept his cultists working for a cartoon duck named Bucky. Both of them are fantastical ideas, but I suspect you'd object to the latter suddenly popping up in your Lovecraft.

Well done, sir! Well done!

"Standardization in the presentation of the sent message allows the receivers to step past translation more fully into the world of your ideas. When the presentation gets in the way, I tell my students, it undermines your authority as an author."

...
nevertheless, i see your point. i guess that i will have to endure the blow to my paizo board authority.

...

if i require Harvard Bluebook standards, i let my secretary fix it. otherwise...

Hey, man, I was answering a question you posed. And I started and ended by saying that I understood your decision and that I'd try to remember your situation. I'm on your side. Don't send your snark my way.

re: Joyce and other authors

When nonstandard language is in a book, our common experience with publishers leads readers to assume that it's an intentional device. We think to ourselves, "Hmm... someone must have liked their experimental literature class!"

When nonstandard language is on an internet discussion board, our common experience leads us to place learning or physical disability a distant third on the list of likely explanations, behind "poster is using their second language" and the BIG winner of "poster does not care."

Ideas :

Create an alchemical item.
Create a building.
Create an ally, follower, or cohort.
Create a low level encounter.
Create a starter town.

(paraphrase) Would proper capitalization make my argument any better?

First off, it sucks that you have partial paralyzation in the relevant hand. It's completely understandable that you don't bother.

Second, it does matter actually. There are two parts to any act of communication: sending the message and receiving the message. Standardization in the presentation of the sent message allows the receivers to step past translation more fully into the world of your ideas. When the presentation gets in the way, I tell my students, it undermines your authority as an author. number of receivers classify poorly presented messages under messages not worth thinking about, as many such posters don't have ideas worth decoding in many people's past history with discussion boards (e.g. Fox sports discussion boards.) That's not the case with you.

It just so happens that their poor work reflects badly on your ideas. It's too bad that your ideas, through little fault of your own, end up the collateral damage of their carelessness.

no wonder it is so difficult for mainstream academia to take fantasy seriously.

Nobody on this thread is allowed to make references to her symbolically wielding "the phallus." It wrecks my procrastination from grading papers when the subtext becomes text.

First, the BBEG should be targeting the NPCs, not the PCs. That's one way to survive. Second, all of the NPCs should be sticking together with the PCs after the first few killings, which means the party will have a HUGE advantage in the number of actions their side can take each round. Third, this is an adventure that you win through deduction and induction, not combat. As a DM, I'd be perfectly fine with having my PCs stabilized below 0 hp be conscious but incapacitated. That way, even if they're out of combat, they're not out of the module. They can provide advice, ask questions, deduce things, etc.

Let the players take Leadership at 6th level. In the meantime, there's plenty of helpful NPCs in the Rune Lords series in numbers 2 and 3, so maybe they help out a bit early.

Alternatively, since the party's going off to Thistletop to help the town out, why not give them a squad of mooks: 1st level warriors. It would make sense...

One of the great merits of the paizo modules and paths has been their visual look, to my mind. It's certainly been a point of emphasis. I'm utterly baffled that they'd put themselves behind a product in which the animators were clearly dead last on the priority list. This barely surpasses He-man in animation quality, and that's a huge insult.

I loved the original trilogy. I'm saddened by this rendition.

For the adventure proposal, how about something that's not been done since 1981's Isle of Dread: a pure exploration adventure!

Discover a new land and get to name it!
Interact with the natives, like monkey goblins or volcano-sledding orcs!
Discover new flora and fauna!
Get trade rights!
Map the area!
Claim it for the Queen!

Yes, we've returned to "The Isle" in the context of an adventure path, but it would be unique and its the quintessential plug and play concept.

And, after all, Paizo's promoting a whole pathfinder thing... what could fit better.

(And, in our litigious time, I'm more than willing to let you or anyone else nab this idea for a module without any compensation or recognition... I just want to plug it in and play it!)

So. It's been 27 days since I ordered. Have you got a tracking number on this shipment?

It's still not here, just so you know. I'll look for it on Monday and contact you then.

Incidentally, this happened one other time that I ordered with you guys, a Dungeon magazine in which the wrong one was shipped to me very late and the replacement was sent very late. I really do think that you need to fix this issue. If it happens again, don't count on my business.

Will do.

On January 4th, amongst other pdfs and subscriptions which got to me, I ordered these:

Dungeon Crawl Classics #31: The Transmuter's Last Touch (d20) Print Edition Shipped Jan 4, 2008
GameMastery Module TC1: Into the Haunted Forest (OGL) Print Edition Shipped Jan 4, 2008
GameMastery Module W1: Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale (OGL) Print Edition Shipped Jan 4, 2008
GameMastery Module U1: Gallery of Evil (OGL) (Print Edition) Shipped Jan 4, 2008
GameMastery Module E1: Carnival of Tears (OGL) Print Edition

These haven't gotten to me. Why? It's been 12 business days.

I know some people are complaining about it but it's nice to have some adult content finally in D&D, besides things where it's the entire focus (Book of Vile Darkness, Book of Erotic Fantasy). Our normally hardened group of players has refused to search several rooms on account of their grossness. It adds a level of grittiness that I usually have to go to other games to get (Warhammer, etc.)

...

Anyway, I've gamed since 1e and in my opinion, these APs (this one and Savage Tide primarily) are the best adventure series ever. Nostalgia makes me like T1-4, A1-4, and GDQ, but they are very much a product of...

QFT. You're aiming big as a company with these products and hitting big too. When problems erupt on these boards about your products, they're never about a lack of vision or passion in your work. While I have a good deal of sympathy for people who have issues about sexual violence in cultural products, especially those likely to be used by teens, you provided some ways to prevent the kind of damage that such products may incur. Such scaling is the responsible use of your position as cultural producers.

If I might make a request, a zany, family-friendly adventure module might balance the scales for those customers who were upset. Perhaps it could be set in a country run by blink dogs?

If it's a use at will cantrip, it can't be cure minor. With enough time between encounters, the party's healed up full with no cost.

I have. It's still doing it, and it's over-charging me by about 40 bucks. The math doesn't add up on the shopping cart page, and that's where it shows 1s for the module and the pathfinder.

I keep trying to place an order through your web site, but it keeps insisting that I'm ordering three copies of Gamemastery module J2 and two copies of Pathfinder 4. I've already entered "1" for the order total several times.

Help me give you money!