veector's page

Fletch wrote:

Just out of curiosity, does LoF take place in a region covered by the Pathfinder Campaign Setting or does this expand the known world into the eastern continent?

The Golarion part takes place in Katapesh, in NE Garund.

Part will take place in the City of Brass, on the elemental plane of Fire. This is "off the map" currently.

I'm gonna buy me a poster-sized sheet of paper and douse it with kerosene. When my players ask to see the map of the Elemental Plane of Fire... well, you get the idea.

BTW, this is a joke.

Benoist, I'm not sure if it's a fair argument. At the same time, its' very difficult to really answer. But let me see if I can get at why.

If 1st ed Greyhawk if "Old School" for someone, how would they have reacted to the FR gray box?

And as far as Greyhawk goes: In my own experience, what was Greyhawk was what we got out of the core books and the modules--we never had the setting materials in my circle when I was young, and so there was a lot of world description we never knew about and never used. To a greater extent then, the world was up to the DM and players. But since we were fairly undemanding at that age as far as world building went, the world was pretty undeveloped: it was a place where we killed things and acquired things.

Now our demands for a developed world are greater, commensurate with our interest in developing a world. We both demand more of our products, and we want greater freedom, effort, and (precious) time to use them to develop and share the world of the game, including our characters and their stories in it.

Coming back to the question of Old School, for me the term and what it tries to capture has both its positive and negative aspects. Nostalgia for and elements of flavor and action from the old days of playing are very desirable for me and most of the players I play with, but there are other elements, such as the lack of immersion and verisimilitude that go into making a compelling world in which to share in our playing, that also were a part of the Old School feel that I have no desire for at all.

Do these suggestions/reflections have anything to offer?

What he said. I say make Pathfinder to be what you want it to be. If all you want is a blank world to play in, just download the maps and make up the rest.

Mairkurion {tm} wrote:

Hello, Veector.

Hi, my name is delabarre, and I have...

<hangs head>

...a complete set of 2E Al'Qadim boxes and books...

I got those! Missing Sha'ir's Handbook and missing Caravans (although I'm not really interested in getting it).

Sha'ir's Handbook was probably one of the best original ideas for a class I've seen.

Thanks! I'll look for that at Hobby Lobby after work today.

Also, get a large bladed Exacto knife and a "self-healing" cutting surface, the kind scrapbookers or quilters use. It will do wonders for saving your blades.

Also, plan out some templates with regular paper about the size of each of the pieces. I know I had to plan the winding staircase using one templates for each of the sections. If the templates are all the correct width and slope, you're ready to begin cutting.

The bells I found at Michael's. I don't remember the manufacturer, but they look exactly like these 2" bells. If you can't get the bells, upside down flower pots painted gold work too.

I'm getting ready to build the Shadow Clock for my group - I'll construct it this weekend, and I've taken some design tips from what you did.

What do you use to attach the foam core sheets together? (e.g. Is there a particular type of glue you prefer - or are you using something other than glue?) This will be my first time working with foam core, so any tips would be appreciated.

Good luck! I used a clear glue that's advertised as scrapbooking glue. It sets pretty fast (within 5 min) and dries very strong overnight.

Specifically, I used this.

Although when you leave the pen overnight, you have to leave it upright so that the glue doesn't pool in the cap with the pointy end.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... Mwangi.

I'd like to welcome everyone to the 4-A meeting. That's Arabian Adventures Addicts Anonymous for those new to the club.

I'm veector, and I'm an Arabian Adventures Addict.

something about dispel magic

LOL... we ran into this too! I was on pins and needles when the cleric was rolling all the caster level checks when he cast dispel on Xanesha. I know she had a much bigger advantage, but he was hoping to get lucky and dismiss the fly. He only got 1 out of 5 buffs she had on herself, and it was something minor.

Serious Gamer Cred for the contents of the shelves (and window sill) in the background of the first pic.

Looks like somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 gaming books. Maybe a nearly complete set of everything from 1st through 4th edition.

Probably 100+ figures visable, plus at least 10 plastic cases filled with more figures.

I can also see the octagonal velvet-lined dice rolling dish, plus assorted other boxes of gaming stuff, cards, etc.

Nah, not that much really. From left to right you might see: most of the books for d20 Modern, almost all the books for 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms, some Necromancer Games books, almost all the splat books from 3.0 and 3.5, Pathfinder APs at the end. Lots of cases below for minis (I probably own around 1000 or so). The players DON'T LIKE rolling in the octagonal dice box (go fig, I can't explain this) so it sits on the shelf. Way back in the corner is the Dwarven Mine set from LEGO and on the window ledge are the ancient dragon minis and some other large minis.

Towel covers the air conditioner in winter.

There's also some Descent: Journeys in the Dark stuff (my favorite board game of all time).

I hope my players appreciate it all. I feel like being a Dungeon Master is my second job and definitely the one I enjoy more.

Just picked this one up on a whim. I love the 70's style art!

Tears of the Genie

Let's go classic:

** spoiler omitted **

LOL... you got me on this one. My initial reaction was.. "Aren't they all like that?"

But seriously, which one?

Troy Denning's work anyone? I liked it.

Page for hints

More old school

Maybe it's worth Paizo knowing the pace of some of our games as part of the playtest. For example, my group plays every week, but we're just rounding out the first chapter of RotRL and we started when the Beta came out. This has got to be valuable information to the publisher in some way.

Wow... I'm not intending to say something hurtful, but that's REALLY slow.

Old skool

The Halls of the Ideologically Challenged

What? Too political? ;)

This is really cool is this like a form filling PDF?

No, just a plain-old HTML page. If you have a web hosting account, you can customize this for your own campaigns.

I'm not going to make this a regular thing. But since the last adventure was a TPK, the following new issue appeared:

The Magnimar Monument

You know it's actually quite simple.

Go in with everything you got that isn't magical. If you can buy a scroll of anti-magic field, cast it on something your rogue carries. Have the rogue simply pick locks and walk in and grab whatever he can. Any magical defenses should be nullified.

Keep the fighters close to fend off any guards.

But if I were a DM guarding a magic item shop, depending on the level of items in the shop I'd have several golems guarding the place at all times.

Is there anyway to redo the main messageboard page so there's not so much whitespace at the top?

Some musings about alternative races in a Middle Eastern setting:

Elves could very easily be stereotyped as night-time caravan traders since their low light vision would make traveling at night ideal. Instead of a focus on nature (as wood-elves would be) they could be focused on Astronomy and the stars for their inspiration. They could also live a more ascetic outlook due to the loneliness of the desert in the evening.

Dwarves, instead of the typical miners/blacksmiths, could be craftsmen of any type. I could see Dwarven Rugs being of extra fine quality.

Just some thoughts...

In preparation of trying to run a campaign based on, to my understanding, Persia, I've been collecting and reading books on Persian history and culture. I really, really want Katapesh to feel like a world apart, not just 'Tolkien with Sand and Camels'.

It's actually closer to Moroccan culture, but to Westerners, these would probably seem very similar anyways.

Let me see if I can dig up some appropriate material...

As for books, the content below can pretty hefty reading. For DMs who want the quick and simple, see my movie recommendations since film has played as much of an influence on D&D Arabian Adventures as literature has.

Written Sources

A History of the Arab Peoples, Albert Hourani

Travels of Ibn Battuta

The Middle East, Bernard Lewis

Film Sources

The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

7th Voyage of Sinbad

Golden Voyage of Sinbad (my personal favorite)

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

Arabian Nights (another favorite)

Please do not watch the Disney version of Aladdin if you're looking for D&D-esque depictions of Arabian culture

Overall, as someone of Middle-Eastern descent, what I recommend is to stress that the civilization is a place of mixing cultures. The Middle East was the place where western culture and eastern culture collided. There was also a VAST amount of trade going on, so the protection of that trade was paramount to most governments. In pre-Islamic Arabia, the government sanctioned as many gods/goddesses as they could from surrounding cultures to increase trade from worshippers of those gods.

If you have any specific questions on language or culture, I'd be happy to answer.

Also found this interesting link. Definitely some good stuff there.

If you're looking for some background music while you game, try these...

North African Music

Bedouin Music

Music of the Oud (Arabian Lute)

I'm going to guess that you're a little off base becasue of your starting @ 0 degrees.. but I could be wrong. Wasn't Varisa supposed to be about the same size as texas? might be eaisier to extrapolate from that

Was that posted somewhere?

I think the key is avoiding the place names and focusing on what action occurs in the adventure. I thought Burnt Offerings was a great title because it was just ambiguous enough.

You could have also titled it:

A New Unpleasantness
or Goblins Delight

I think you guys are on the right track. My favorite titles are actually the one-word titles from Tracy Hickman's work:

"Ravenloft" and "Pharaoh"

Maybe Paizo could change how they describe their subscription. Instead of subscribing to a print product and getting a pdf for free with it, they could call it a pdf subscription that comes with a free print product. Don't want to pay shipping? Decline the free print product.

I think this is a better way to do it. Basically, this reinforces that subscribers pay for content, not paper.

According to the maps of Golarion that are in the various products, I'm going to make some assumptions in this post and I'd like an official "Sounds right" or "You're way off base"

I generally like to mark the calendar of the campaign in advance with weather conditions. This saves time and I can approximate what weather patterns would be like MUCH better than rolling on a table.

So, in order to approximate the weather correctly, you need to know the latitude of the locations.

Where I am, in Boston, we're 42 degrees north, a much different range of temperatures than, say Los Angeles, 34 degrees north.

So here's my guess at the approximate latitude of Golarion cities using a latitude line running on the bottom of the map as 0 degrees latitude:

Riddleport - 50 degrees N
Magnimar - 45 degrees N
Korvosa - 44 degrees N
Absolom - 32 degrees N
Sothis - 25 degrees N
Merab - 26 degrees N
Oppara - 36 degrees N
Kerse - 41 degrees N
Nerosyan - 54 degrees N
Egorian - 37 degrees N
Katapesh - 18 degrees N
Quantium - 12 degrees N
Mechitar - 7 degrees N
Eleder - 5 degrees N

If someone can do this mathematically, please correct me. But for my needs, the approximates are good enough to get me the weather. I can compare to existing cities with similar geographical features and get a decent annual weather pattern.

Edit: One thing to note if you're doing this mathematically, I do not assume the top of the map is 90 degrees north. Probably more like 75 or 80 degrees north.

So; I see a lot of dire animals in the 3.5 books; is that a template or what; can anyone point me to the rules that say how to upgrade an animal to a dire anmial; is that a template; and advancement or what; anyone know?

The specific answer is that Dire Animals, in the modern sense of the word anyways, are creatures that inhabited the Earth in the Pleistocene Epoch (Dire Wolf particularly). Since D&D adopted these creatures, they've taken some liberties and introduced some that didn't exist.

Since they are completely separate animals, no template would cover these.

However, as a player of a fantasy game, I see no reason why there shouldn't be a template to create these.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. It was definitely a labor of love.

The players loved it as well. They tried going up the stairs and were successful for a little while, then the bells started dropping.

A final appearance by Xanesha, who immediately appeared next to the fighter and made a full attack, told them they were in over their heads.

I like it, but I'd also like to have the whole SRD content like this.

veector wrote:

Andinel wrote:

Somehow I can't get to the actual image layer. Whenever I try to select a map, I just get the background. I'm using Acrobat Pro 9 on a Mac, but I don't think that should have anything to do with it.

I believe this only works on versions prior to Adobe Reader 8.1. See the replies above.

Even with a full version of Acrobat? I'm not using Reader for this.

I believe this is still the case even with full Acrobat because Acrobat still doesn't allow you to disassemble the pdf. The most I've been able to do with full Acrobat was extract specific pdf pages.

Sharoth wrote:

Don't do it! It is a TRAP!!!

~GRINS~

Well, IMHO, the RotRL Map Folio is a nice addition, since it removes the need to search for most of the maps. Other than that, have an extra Players Guide for yourself.

Edit - Also, look in the messageboards for what other DMs have experienced. Some of them have some great ideas that would add to the experience.

Are the maps of the dungeons still too small to be used as battlemaps? There has been many complaints about that in the reviews of this product.

There are quite a lot of solutions to this, including my own. Check out the Rise of the Runelords section of the messageboards.

I guess it's better than paying full price + shipping.

Somehow I can't get to the actual image layer. Whenever I try to select a map, I just get the background. I'm using Acrobat Pro 9 on a Mac, but I don't think that should have anything to do with it.

I believe this only works on versions prior to Adobe Reader 8.1. See the replies above.

veector wrote:

The Magnimar Monument

The end of this adventure was a TPK thanks to Xanesha, but the heroes had a good time. There are some hints in the articles as to what happened afterward.

This is fantastic! And it wouldn't require much editing to make some of the articles fit for any group. I might add some other stuff that has nothing to do with anything like a new magic shop opening up and putting other, more established shops out of business or whatever, but if I don't have a TPK it's not really an issue. The PCs should get to Xanesha next session, so we'll see.

You could also turn it around and adjust the articles to be in praise of the heroes, those who did not die.

veector wrote:

What penalties are there for the players if they have to create new characters after a TPK?

None.

The penalty is placed upon the Game Master at that point.

I guess my point is that two things are possibly going on here:

#1 The players don't want to play with more sensibility. In this case it may just be incompatible gaming preferences.

#2 The players don't know how to play with more sensibility. If this is the case, then I'd throw them a bone every now and then. Have all party members make Wisdom checks (DC 15) to see if their decided course of action has some drawbacks or if they realize something important. We can't all have the high wisdom our characters sometimes have.

Feel free to steal if anyone wants the code or content of the page.

What penalties are there for the players if they have to create new characters after a TPK?

The sidebar below indicates a free PDF. I can't seem to find it on the site.

Free Web Supplement
This section presents new character traits for Legacy of Fire
characters, but doesn’t go into detail about the mechanics
and doesn’t detail the 40 different basic traits. Character traits
were officially introduced in the Second Darkness Player’s
Guide, and now you can download the character traits rules
as a free PDF, available online at paizo.com.

page 7, Legacy of Fire Companion

The Magnimar Monument

The end of this adventure was a TPK thanks to Xanesha, but the heroes had a good time. There are some hints in the articles as to what happened afterward.

Take a look and let me know what you think!

The Shadow Clock

Going up stairs

The bells!
Since I took these pics, I was able to replace the bells with REAL metal brass bells.

Xanesha awaits!

If anyone wants to meet me. I'll be over at the registration tables around noon on Saturday, wearing a black D&D t-shirt and maybe black jacket.

Oh, and here's what I look like...

Bald man in blue

There's no mention of these any more on the WotC site, just a "Character Builder" and "Bonus Tools" which are web versions of stuff similar to e-Tools.

Any ideas?

I'm going more Cthulhu-esque.

All Illithids are descended from an ancient being named Ilthoon. Rumor has it that his gigantic corpse was buried and when the time was right, would be revealed. Illithids would be able to enter his corpse and discover all his secrets.

Now, after untold millennia, the shifting sands of the desert have revealed his dried husk. Enter if ye dare!

I guess I'm having trouble seeing ghouls as having any need to lurk around in groups, especially in locations where they're not going to find enough flesh to eat.

That was the thing about vampires, they make sense because they blend in with society.

I'm trying to add some speed and immersion into my games by using the maps in Dungeon/Pathfinder PDFs to create full scale battlemaps.

I'm good with the scaling up - I've gotten them to .tiff files with the 5' squares at 1". The problem I'm having is printing the (now very large) images on my standard color laser printer.

Does anyone have a good (preferably free) solution for tiling large images over several sheets of paper while maintaining scale? Elsewhere on these boards someone suggested importing into Excel, but that seemed to deform the image a bit - it made the squares wider than they were tall. I've also been looking into .PDF solutions - I can easily output the files to .PDF, but I can't find a reliable way of tiling the print.

I have looked into the Gamer Print shop, and though they are quite reasonably priced, I think they're still too expensive for regular "everyday" maps. Perhaps for a major setpiece or some such.

Any suggestions welcome.

My solution is in this thread.

Ok, I recently ran an adventure where the players encountered several ghouls (RotRL #2) and through their use of the spell "Hide from Undead" I allowed the PCs to go past several ghouls undetected without saving throws.

This was a complete mistake on my part because I figured ghouls were unintelligent undead.

So going back and seeing my mistake, I'm now wondering, "what makes ghouls intelligent?"

Vampires are usually solitary, or organize their efforts to attack prey. Also, vampires are normally portrayed as very intelligent beings.

So, what's the deal with ghouls? They're listed as having an intelligence score, but what would roleplaying ghouls be like? They supposedly have Int scores of 13, but I can't imagine what a ghoul thinks about besides eating people.

Any ideas?

More spells need a casting time of "1 full round action".

Andrew Bay wrote:

I generally only allow leveling to occur when the characters are resting.

Is this normal? I see mention of characters leveling in the middle of dungeons, like half-way through thistle top. Do you let your characters level immediately after the combat that won them the XP to level?

Thanks,
IMarv

I let characters level up things like Saves, HP, attack bonuses, and number of spells. I don't allow learning of new spells, skills or feats until the group sleeps.

Same here.

I'll add my own 2 cp...

The best writers of all time, to me, are those which have impacted me the most.

#1 The writer of the Quran - Whomever you believe wrote it, there's no denying it's beauty. If you can read it in Arabic, I don't need any further explanation on this. If you're reading a translation, it's like reading a Shakespearean Sonnet translated to another language.

#2 Tolkien - More than his writing, I loved Tolkien's ideas. When I first tried to read LotR, I got through the first book, barely, and had to put it down as I was getting frustrated with how he seems to spend ages on unimportant things, and then dramatic events are over in a couple of pages. However, his world completely captivated me, and I fell in love with reading about his world ala the Tolkien Encyclopedia.

#3 H.P. Lovecraft - Lovecraft's style is very singular. He often writes of madness again and again in the same style. He doesn't seem versatile, but for that one style of horror fiction, he has me captivated and I always enjoy reading it.

#4 Shakespeare - I love Shakespeare for his use of language. Certain phrases, similes and metaphors he uses in his plays are timeless.

#5 Jason Buhlman - "SUCK UP!" Yeah I hear you. But honestly, without Paizo putting out Pathfinder, I don't think I'd be playing D&D again and I certainly wouldn't have met the great guys I play with.