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 Recent Posts
My party wisely decided to get out before the inquisitors raided their hideout, and both Janiven and Arael secreted themselves away. If J&A end up getting arrested, my plan was to have the party do a prison break from the Westcrown prison during the chaos of the Infernal Syndrome.
Yeah, they -really- wanted to make their hideout be Delvehaven. I gave them that opportunity, but when they figured out that the Thrunists were scrying that location, they decided instead on the Sanqatada Cinqarda (where they'd developed contacts that were already sympathetic to the 'rebellion'.
Hmm ... hadn't thought about that. Not sure! I will ponder.
Thank you for the kind words! I don't use anything fancy - basically a combination of Adobe Acrobat (to export/cut-and-paste images from the pdfs), and Photoshop. Over the last few years I've basically been exporting every image out of the Paizo pdfs, and cataloging them into the following taxonomy: -Paizo
For example, in my paper folder, I have all the different paper backgrounds that Paizo has used over the years. Then when I'm making a handout, I pick a piece of paper that looks good, find a handwriting font, apply various ink/splatter effects, and then emboss in interesting images into the picture as flair. After doing a dozen or so of them I can usually rip one out in a few hours.
Neat scenario. A couple of nitpicks: - One of the flip maps contained within (ruins) has inconsistent grid sizes, so if you are playing on a VTT you won't be able to get the grid to space evenly. - No map for the city of Trollheim (either in this scenario or in the Paizo collection as a whole, AFAIK).
Here's how I use 'em: - Prior to running an AP (doing CoTs now), I go through and pick out interesting items from my item cards
Pros: - Players love it!
Cons: - A fair amount of work to prep the cards.
As an addendum, I also use campaign coins for wealth management. This also helps manage campaign economy.
things I've seen: - use poker chips to calculate player bonuses (red for attack bonuses, blue for damage bonuses, white for universal bonuses, etc) - if a player tries to use an ability on their turn but doesn't know how it works ("I cast web! Uh, let me see how it works..."), they insta-delay until they can come back and tell you how the spell works - use condition cards - write on the map in dry/wet erase current shared bonuses (bless, bard song, etc) - use herolabs tactical console to keep track of current bonuses/conditions - if there are minions in combat, have them drop from any damage at all (4th ed trick) - have the DM call out who is on deck ("Bob to act, Joe's on deck")
Hey, thanks! I think it is just the confusing way that flickr does file management. try this link and tell me if it works for you. if it does, I'll correct my links: image link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45217036@N00/5561986441/sizes/l/in/photostream / download link: http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5109/5561986441_f1fb7ba3c1_b_d.jpg
I had the pleasure in playing in Sean K Reynold's Angel Apocalypse game at Paizocon, and he did all his dice rolling in the open. I liked it. Since then I've been doing the same. It makes me feel like more of a player, and, as Evil Lincoln says, I feel less bad when the rolls go against the players.
My party has hit Infernal Syndrome and I am makin' the handouts. First up: Liebdaga's Infernal Contract. (I riffed off of the infernal contract found in Princes of Darkness. )
The Xanesha's List that was posted earlier didn't look 'natural' enough to me (I'm a sucker for photoshop handwritten fonts), so I redid it with natural font and bloodspatter.
I am using Maptools at home with exactly this setup. It works very well. Players can move their pogs around with a player mouse (aka initiative token), resize the map, add spell template effects, etc. As the DM I always flash pictures of the monster they are fighting, player handouts, and of course gorgeous Paizo maps with fog of war.
I did an 'in-between' session using some of the above ideas. Player handout - note from Obertein warning the party of their impending arrest for breaking House Thrune law for breaking into Delvehaven, and harboring a known fugitive. Worked out well. I'm starting AP 4 next week, and hopefully all of the Council reveals will be less ... heavy handed.
Thank you! The below should work: - the deed to Foxglove Manor, from the year 4627
More skinsaw murder handouts: - the deed to Foxglove Manor, from the year 4627
It looks like the original site hosting the file is down. I've set up a temporary so folks can still have access to this fantastic tool. - Excel 2003 version
Note, when you visit the link, you have to do a file->download to download the actual spreadsheet
Those are some beautiful maps. Looking forward to the day when Paizo starts supporting Maptools campaign data sets as purchasable product sets on their site. Heck, I have a number of Pathfinder society sessions that I converted to native Maptools and Herolabs format that I can't even _give_ to Paizo, ... then there's Evil Lincoln's epic RoRL Maptools campaign file that will never see the light of day (I can't see it even though I'm a superscriber! :-( )... and my complete CoT maptools files ... and my entire Paizo token/pog collection ... etc etc.
My group changed the critical miss rules so that you have to fail three times (first roll the one, and then blow the critical miss check _twice_ in a row, not _once). Their main complaint was that the critical miss desk makes folks much less heroic. Additionally, I only enable the critical hit deck for bad guys if they are BBEGs, not moogs.
My party just finished What Lies in Dust and, before launching them into the Infernal Syndome, and thought I'd pause the campaign to do some plot sprinkling/setup. My core issue with IS is that it introduces the Council so quickly; in the first 3 AP entries, we see very little of the Council; in issue 4, suddenly it is raining Council Loyalists and Usurpers. In issue 5 that party learns, mostly randomly and through a dead pesh dealer, who the real power behind the Council usurpers is. It is pretty clear that the party never really has to work to figure out what is going on with the Drovenge's plot - it all just falls into their lap nicely. Thus, it seems like between AP 3 and AP 4 is the perfect time to start injecting some fun plot events that make the party feel like they've earned the Council reveals that occur in APs 4 and 5. So here are some of my ideas on how to do this. I'd appreciate any others! Start by having Eirtein Oberigo send the party a private note, to the tune of: "You are about to get raided by Thrune agents for your somewhat less-than-secret delve into Delvehaven. Hide any contraband you took from the Pathfinder Lodge and be cooperative with them. Once they've finished shaking you down come visit me, I have a few small jobs for you." If the PCs decide to fight the Hellknight Thrune agents, that makes them fugatives for the rest of the AP (which would be fun). Recall at this point in the AP Oberigo has been tasked by Papa Drovenge to insert double agents into the various Council groups to flush out information on who the Usurpers are; thus, when they visit Oberigo, he reveals some key information to them: The Council of Thieves is alive and well—rumors that it long ago disbanded are false, and he believes that there a coup is going to be attempted soon inside the Council and wants the party's help in getting to the bottom of it. (Why should the party help? Oberigo can appeal to their Wisecrani patriotism ["We bring stability to the city, and a revolt will bring chaos and the House Thrune upon us"], or their love of money if they have a mercenary bent.) As such, he asks the party to do some favors for him: 1) Insider info: become a regular member of Abertin "the Dealer" Bittershins weekly high stakes card game, and try to learn where the halfling's loyalties lie. 2) Tailing work: spend an evening tailing Zol-the-Cleaner around town to see who he is talking to. This results in the party being stuck in the streets after dark and being attacked by a few heavy waves of shadow critters. 3) Noble recon: have dinner with the Mhartis family and see if they can figure out why they have been acting so strange recently. (Answer: they are being hunted by a vampire, which preps AP 4's "Vampire Panic!" side quest.) 4) prove that Durotas Scasi Bolvona, commander of the condottari, has been taking bribes from someone in the Council to allow them night-time access to the waterways around the Folly. This (somehow) results in a conflict between the Hellknights and the Dotari, which foreshadows the eventual conflict between the two groups in AP 4. 5) Loyalty test: pretend to be a outside purchaser of Pesh and try to entrap "Goren One Ear" into violating his Council regulations (this will make Goren's eventual reveal less lame).
My party is doing Misgivings on Sunday so I thought I'd whip up the haunts into something fun. On the Skinsaw Murder threads baron arem heshvaun had the great idea of giving the players handouts for each haunt so they can roleplay out the different haunts. Awesome! So I converted all of baron's text into some nice photoshop files. here's the raw png:
Yeah, I'm in the same boat... This might make an interesting product for paizo: a superscriber network, that allows folks like myself Evil Lincoln to share things like VTT files in a paizo-blessed closed system. Give that I own everything paizo's done in the last 4 years - both digital and physical - I'd -love- to have EL's Maptool campaign files, as it is very time consuming for me to build it myself. (My party just finished Burnt Offerings.)
This won't help you at all ;p , but if you ever want to read a wonderful piece of fiction that features Greek Fire prominently, check out Neil Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle trilogy.
Both Adobe 9 and Adobe X have an 'Extract all images' function that allows you to export every image in a pdf. If the image was built using layers - which Paizo does now - it'll export, say, "virgin" maps (ie maps without labels, traps, text, etc). Which is nice for VTT'ing. the only downside it it exports -every- image, so it ends up being a TON of random image files that you have to clean up.
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