thenorthman's page

I just downloaded one of these supposedly lite downloads. They are still terrible, giant, and slow. I won't buy another thing from you until you start offering a version that puts function ahead of form.

I will say they are significantly faster than the original terrible PDFs but not enough.

Classy ...

Life in the Paizo Warehouse.... if Paizo shipped chocolate instead of books.

I used to like Star Wars better. But after Lucas even made the

lightsaber no longer cool, I switched to Star Trek.

.

This should explain much.

I used to like Star Wars better. But after Lucas even made the
lightsaber no longer cool, I switched to Star Trek.

.

The first four seasons of Babylon 5 stomped every incarnation of Star Trek that has existed into the ground...hard. Even the fifth season is better than all but a handful of the best episodes ever.

I'll pass on Blahblahblah 5, thanks. Give me Farscape any day.

No shields?

That said, I don't know what your take on J.J.Abrams version of Star Trek is. :)

I think your blogger has missed out on one very essential truth of Trek in all it's incarnations.

The show is a product of it's time. TOS reflected the views of Roddenberry's generation, a very conservative, xenophobic, and frequently reactionary bunch, which still had some very important values and virtues attached to it. For all of its good points TOS could justly be accused of racial and national tokenism, being very much in favor of the Vietnam War, and harshly critical of the progressive movements of it's day, and expressing several misogynistic viewpoints as well in it's treatment of female characters.

Star Trek TOS was listed as one of President Nixon's favorite shows, and given the politics it's creators expressed, that's not a major surprise. It was also the product of a time where we were looking forward to conveniences like automated grocery stores, radio tube trains, and personal flying station wagons for every American family by the 21st century, where we'd all be dressing like the Jetsons. Remember also at this time that America was 20+ years into the biggest economic boom it would ever know in it's history. Remember from the point of view of 60's Kirk it was an accepted fact that a woman could not make a starship commander. (TOS's treatment of the one female commander encountered in the series was not a rebuttal of that sentiment.)

TNG, literally being written a generation later and with Roddenberry more or less out of the command chair in production, expresses the values of a different generation who had different expectations especially in the matter of gender roles.

Similarly, the Abrams movie is a product of yet another Generation X, made for the Millennial market. It's the product of a generation which no longer has the 50's and 60's inherent optimism of what a new century will bring.

Interestingly enough, my spouse who is a decade younger than me, a child of the 70's had this one cogent thing to say about the movie.

"The series has finally grown up."

I think that the plausibility of the various tech systems is a bit of a weird standard for defining which one you enjoyed watching more, but to each his own.

I went with Star Wars because I like it better, gut feeling-wise.

I realize I just picked 'feelings' over 'awesome tech thingies', and am thus banned from nerdhood forever. I'll be over there in yonder corner.

I still go by Star Trek's Red Shirt Advantage. (mainly to show how silly such arguments are)

Meh. Babylon 5!

.

Star Trek

I have to say that overall I really enjoy this show. But there are certain things that require suspension of disbelief in terms of their decisions.

Is it just me, or do way too many people in this show regularly venture out on their own? At night, or in the woods, or out of sight of their friends. Umm, there are killer zombies out there and they’ll like eat you.

And while on the subject of bad ideas, to me that farm doesn’t seem overly defensible. They have very few people and no real defenses like walls, fences, trenches, etc. Shouldn’t they have a way to seal off the farm house and hole up if a bunch of the living dead show up for a snack? I mean have a stocked pantry, storm cellar, well for water (and/or rain barrels), and so on?

The other thing that gets me with them is they make these runs into town to go to the drug store to get stuff. Umm, take a couple of pickups and some shotguns, roll up to the store, take everything out, and move it to your home base. Why keep making trips into town when town is full of walkers and other trouble?

Also, there’s that big car pileup they ended up at right before they found the farm. Why not take a few trips out there with a posse and drive some of those cars back to the farm? Easier than messing with siphoning gas and it gives you spare cars and parts if you need them.

Just my take. It's fun looking at the actions of the characters in terms of how a PC adventuring party would likely address them.

L

Something's definitely funky since mine is showing nothing shipping till mid-May and then it's a giant logjam.

Yeah Mine too. Im not to worried about everything coming at once, but yeah I have all of the first 3 skull and shackles shipping mid-may. I would like some more info on this so I can prepare for a 60 dollar shipment that month. Please let us know as soon as possible because these shipping problems are starting to seem more frequent.

So let's all just all not do anything that makes Paizo *need* to codify this crap.

It needs to be easier to see.

@Toadkiller Dog - Actually, it is not an idiotic question.

I am almost 65, and it is time my wife and I redo our wills. In NY state, if you don't do it every 5(?) years or so, the rules change and then the estate gets screwed by NY.

I was actually going to send an email to customer service, or perhaps Vic, and ask that exact question. Both my son and grandson play Pathfinder, and I would want them to have access to all my PDFs.

-- david
Papa.DRB

Send that email, and I hope it sets an awesome precedent.

Unfortunately, no. We are not set up to do this automatically. If you are having difficulties with the unpredictable nature of the release schedule, I would suggest using store credit to pay for your subscription shipments.

This way, you can see what the upcoming shipment will cost on your My Subscriptions page and get a Paizo gift certificate in that amount. Gift certificates are charged immediately, so this puts the timing of the charge into your direct control.

Thanks,
cos

Well a "Calculate Shipping" button is fairly standard.

Or at least it's what people have grown to expect from Amazon, Ebay and Half.com, so it comes to much the same thing.

As the OP, I'm thrilled to report my shipment arrived today in this huge box containing my new PF Heroes & Monsters minis.
Of course, I promised my wife to wait on the de-boxing until she's home from work.

Great job snowy Paizo peeps!

Walking was interesting as the freezing hail/snow mix left a fun crunchy coating of ice over everything.

When I ventured out of my Fortress of Solitude this morning, I noticed the same thing and it made me hungry for crème brûlée.

Also thanks to all of you that walked, skied, used a dog sled pulled by snow bunnies, or rode polar bears to work today to do that.

OMG I should totally have hooked up the cats to a sled!

In fact, I am planning on picking up Death's Heretic because of the fiction that was posted to the blog, and I would not have bought it otherwise.

Thank you, Shadowcat7! Both for picking up Death's Heretic, and for explaining in one sentence why web fiction in the blog is important. ;)

Am I the only one not excited? I can't justify buying this because if I need 6 kobalds for combat (kingmaker) I'd have to buy 6 boxes... This is stupid.

They have said some of the common monsters will have more than one. Plus if this sells I wouldn't be to surprised if they don't sell some smaller packs like maybe humaniods or something along those lines for people needing more of certain monsters.

Will Save: 1d20 + 5

I think I failed. Here is my credit card.

You forgot the -4 vs. Paizo products!

Will Save: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (2) + 5 = 7

I think I failed. Here is my credit card.

I can see us doing smaller configurations to support the Bestiary Box, but we wanted to start everyone off with a nice big collection of (almost) all the creatures from the main monster book.

Later stuff will come later. :)

Chernobyl wrote:

I can only assume that there won't be enough bases for all the creatures at once? seems like 300+ bases would take quite a bit of packaging. How many bases are provided?

That's a very good question. I hope that Paizo offers up a bundle of bases that can be bought from their store.

We're also looking into this, and hope to be able to offer additional bases. I'm also going to look into multi-colored bases, as that sort of thing could come in very handy for GMs for all kinds of reasons.

Ohhhh nooooo!!!! So that's like a dozen dragons and elementals eliminating the cool unique creatures such as Winter Wolves and others much better creatures... too bad :(

Gargantuan and bigger pawns are just not feasible.

It's even worse as there are also the metallic dragons which I really don't care for so that means there are 30 dragons in the box... as with elementals there are: 24

Actually the current plan cuts all of the Huge metallic dragons, figuring that they aren't used as often. We will get to them eventually in later sets, I hope, but certain sacrifices had to be made to keep everything on a reasonable number of sheets.

54 - 14 (as I don't mind one of each species of dragons and elemental) = 40

I think you're underselling the play value of multiple sizes of elementals. They are frequent summoning fodder, and given their neutral alignment they are generally more versatile than, say, a good dragon.

So 40 creatures will be eliminated for the cause of more dragons and more elementals...

It's so much more complicated than this when you figure in different sizes, how many of various sizes fit on sheets, how many metal dies must be created for each sheet configuration, etc. It's like a giant, giant algebra problem. If I wasn't a gamer, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it.

I don't count bigger and smaller elementals as different creatures, just resized ones that are not really nessesairy for myself as I really only like the Large elementals and the Ancient Dragons. (of course its my own opinion, but my own opinion must be there to buy a product, I can't be happy because others really enjoy hundreds of one creature type that I won't enjoy)

The thing is, the Box needs to serve the needs of more than just you, or more than just me. I don't generally use dragons in my campaigns (though you wouldn't know it from last week's game), but it would be lame to deny them to everyone else based on my personal preferences. I'm trying to make the mix work the best for everyone, and I'm confident that you'll be pleased with the final product.

I hope there's an Invisible Stalker pawn, using the artwork from 2E MM

I believe WOTC hold the copyright for this artwork. No one can publish blank space without paying them royalities.

Elcian

It would be nice to also have common ones available as mini boxes. Orcs. Gnolls, Goblins, Kobolds, etc. 8 minis are great, but sometimes you might need 12 or even 20, especially if you're using suicidal goblins...

Thanks and Happy Birthday.

1/13 is henceforth to be called Cosmoday and if any space bound Russians think it is named after them you have permission to correct them.

Happy birthday, Cosmo.

Happy Cosmoday, everyone else.

agh random

Just a reminder: We will be authorizing for the rest of the January Subscription shipments tomorrow, January 12th!

IMHO the back of the card should have stats and flavor text.

Sorry. Like the item cards, the face cards are—and will continue to be—stat free.

First! Will there be cards like these for every AP?

Let's see how well these sell!

First! Will there be cards like these for every AP?

I don't really care much for this series except for Ahsoka, since she is the only reason I have watch this series at all. Mostly because I can't stand the three movies this shows characters(mostly) are from and that Ahsoka will more then likely be dead by the time the third movie's timeline comes around also keeps me from getting too interested.

So they are doing a series that takes place after episode 3's timeline after all?

Got mine today and put it in my Christmas card display. Then called in my 8-year-old daughter, she of the Beginner Box and heroes minis and pink sparkly dice, and asked her "Do you recognize any of these people?"

*delighted gasp* "That's Merisiel! And ... and the wizard! What was his name again? Ezren! And who's that? Kyra! And ... and ... I remember ... Valeros! That is so cool! Who sent you that? Give them twenty dollars! No, give them forty dollars!"

I was thinking shouldn't the adventure path specific map folio be part of the adventure path subscription? It seems the ppl that would want it would be the ones running the games.

Not only is this just one hell of a great movie, it's a walk back in time for we grognards! It's like finding a lost Speilberg film from the 80s. Camera angles, close ups, pans, sound design, even lens flares--vintage awesome!

Very highly recommended.

But how is it possible that other sites can ship much cheaper, like the afore-mentioned Book Depository?

I wanted to buy 5th printing of the Core Rulebook and I was shocked to see that shipping fee is 45$, whereas the book itself is 50$. Added to that is the customs tax (20-30% of the value of the packages with value over 75$), so I'd end up paying somewhere around 130$ for a 50$ book, if I wanted to buy through paizo site.

That was crap. I can't believe they have kept Shane alive and let that character die.

Still, good show. I hate that they are giving a mid-season break of death. :-(

"Standard postal delivery'' should, in general, end up being the "cheapest method available."

You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Right now, I'm looking at buying Key Largo, and adding it to my monthly shipping. Estimate for Standard Postal Delivery: 52.48. Estimate for USPS Priority Mail: 41.55.

I find the cheapest shipping option varies quite a bit.

In case there was ever any doubt... here are 2 reasons why Erik is more awesome than Chuck Norris:

#1

So no, we won't be doing POGs.

#2

I am not too worried about longevity, and even if I were, I'd still be pushing them to make the miniatures as awesome as possible at as good a price as possible for basically one reason:

Because I can.

I'm really confused by that statement.

I give up. All I care to say is: ISM GOOD!

LOL; the "very limited appetite for crunch?" All three of us resent that. ;-)

Edit: One tiny nitpick -- if the ISM content is that good (and universally applicable), perhaps it belonged in UM?

ISM should be on the buy list too, Bugley. It's one of the best Paizo releases of 2011. Not just for Golarion, the school rules are brilliant!

James Jacobs wrote:

...but yes, the plan is to make the wizards in "Rise of the Runelords" who studied Thassilonian style to use the Inner Sea Magic rules for Thassilonian specialists...

Meaning Inner Sea Magic will be required? Egads. If so, that seems like a fantastic way to shrink your audience from everyone who has the CRB to everyone who has Inner Sea Magic, which I suspect is a substantially smaller number. It also doesn't seem to be in keeping with the assertion that this is "a reprint first and foremost."

Holy overreaction, Batman!

No, Inner Sea Magic will NOT be required. The rules for Thassilonian spellcasting are essentially this:

The wizard has his two prohibited schools pre-picked for them.
The wizard can't prepare spells from those schools at all.
The wizard gets a (2) listed after one spell for each level from his specialized school, indicating that he can cast that one spell twice rather than once.

ALL of those changes can be absorbed into a wizard stat block without us having to explain anything, and it'll work fine.

If you want to reverse engineer the wizard's stat block to know how we put it together, or if you want to get in there and tinker with the stats to transform things beyond what we provide, then yes, you might want to have Inner Sea Magic handy so you know what we're doing... but if you're getting in there to tinker and rebuild and all that, chances are you're not a very casual gamer. Chances are great that you've got a LOT of rulebooks already, and the prospect of buying one more (if you don't already own it) isn't a big deal to you.

If you're just looking to run Rise of the Runelords, though, and trust us to provide the stat blocks you need to run the game, then you don't need Inner Sea Magic at all.

The ONLY books you'll really need to run this are the Core Rulebook and the three Bestiaries. All of which will have their content free on the PRD by the time the hardcover is out (and all of which will have super cheap 10 dollar PDFs).

Must carry big heavy books, make you strong.

Also broke.

I would like to point out that I hounded CustServ about this at least a week ago!

Indeed, partly due to your hounding we realized that we might be able to give subscribers a bit more advanced notice than saying "early, mid or late". We are kind of testing the water here to see if subscribers find this useful. Adding this thread for November was kind of a last minute thing, but for December, I hope to have a sticky up about a week before we begin the processing process.

In general, are posts like this something that you would find helpful?