RuyanVe |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That's what I noticed as well, E_B.
It's on the map, but not in the gazeteer - which makes sense, but than again it should have been omitted from the map as well.
There was a similar debate on the forums, I think in conjunction with Shattered Star where knowledge about itslocation was taken for granted (due to the AP happening several years (?) after its discovery in RotRL).
Ruyan.
PS: Yay, Lyrie!
James Jacobs Creative Director |
GeraintElberion |
Oh so true. I just noticed that as well. Very irritating.
Ruyan.
C'mon people, how are we going to remember we're reading the guide to the Rise of the Runelords? It's not like it is written on the cover or anything... And how will we ever remember by the end? It's not like the last three pages are adverts for Rise of the Runelords...
On the other hand, the map of Sandpoint is awesome.
The campaign traits seem unusually powerful.
This guide gives players more knowledge about Thassilon than I though was common knowledge (i.e. "When the Thassilonian Empire shattered 10,000 years ago, much of western Varisia fell into the sea, becoming what is now known as the Varisian Gulf." or "Although the abbey is an impressive architectural feat in its own right, the Masked Abbess and her closest advisors know it’s actually built atop the ruins of a much older structure.")
The regional description and player's hints are very strong bits of writing.
All in all, and despite the awesome town map, I prefer the original.
ohako |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Ooooh, I wanted like to this so much. Fiddlesticks! I guess I'm just going to have to write my own. And, since these campaign traits aren't quite Open, it means I have to keep it to myself.
Basically, this guide has _too much_ world-fluff in it. I'm going to try and get at least 1 person new to D&D to play this campaign, and the last thing I need is a whole lot of...realmslore. I'm going to make something simpler and more streamlined. For that, I have a few questions for the general audience
a) what are the six most common gods worshiped around Sandpoint? (as called out in the 'Student of Faith' trait)
b) I'm looking for a sub-list of all the locations in this book, for a good mix of 'origin spots'. Here's what I've got. Anywhere else I should add?
1. Sandpoint
2. Korvosa
3. Magnimar
4. Riddleport
(these 4 for humans and halflings)
5. Janderhoff (for dwarves)
6. Mierani Forest (for elves)
7. Whistledown (for gnomes)
8. Urglin (for orcs)
c) Does anyone know of a good way to slurp that Varisia map, and pull all the text but those eight spots off of it? (maybe leaving the border mountains and the large bodies of water)
d) one of the campaign traits calls out being familiar with native Varisian culture and language without being explicitly Varisian. Is it an expectation of the campaign that all the starting humans and halflings are ex-colonial Chelaxians?
Cheers,
Ohako
RuyanVe |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Concerning a):
Concerning b):
I'd add Kaer Maga (suitable for all kinds).
Concerning c):
Head over to the AP sub-forums and check out the community-created stuff for RotRL - I'm sure you will find all/most of what you're looking for.
Otherwise GIMP or Photoshop might do the trick, but I'm no expert
Concerning d):
Again? The AP does not necessarily assume, the PCs originate from Varisia at all, the traits are just there to create a deeper connection and giving the PCs more reason to care and get involved - where they've lived the last 10 years doesn't matter at all.
All in all, see the original Player's Guide for further info.
Ruyan.
GeraintElberion |
Ooooh, I wanted like to this so much. Fiddlesticks! I guess I'm just going to have to write my own. And, since these campaign traits aren't quite Open, it means I have to keep it to myself.
Basically, this guide has _too much_ world-fluff in it. I'm going to try and get at least 1 person new to D&D to play this campaign, and the last thing I need is a whole lot of...realmslore. I'm going to make something simpler and more streamlined. For that, I have a few questions for the general audience
a) what are the six most common gods worshiped around Sandpoint? (as called out in the 'Student of Faith' trait)
b) I'm looking for a sub-list of all the locations in this book, for a good mix of 'origin spots'. Here's what I've got. Anywhere else I should add?1. Sandpoint
2. Korvosa
3. Magnimar
4. Riddleport
(these 4 for humans and halflings)
5. Janderhoff (for dwarves)
6. Mierani Forest (for elves)
7. Whistledown (for gnomes)
8. Urglin (for orcs)c) Does anyone know of a good way to slurp that Varisia map, and pull all the text but those eight spots off of it? (maybe leaving the border mountains and the large bodies of water)
d) one of the campaign traits calls out being familiar with native Varisian culture and language without being explicitly Varisian. Is it an expectation of the campaign that all the starting humans and halflings are ex-colonial Chelaxians?Cheers,
Ohako
You can cut and paste most of what you want from the original player's guide.
There is no expectation of Chelaxian descent in the AP, unless it has been massively altered from the original.Thorkull |
c) Does anyone know of a good way to slurp that Varisia map, and pull all the text but those eight spots off of it? (maybe leaving the border mountains and the large bodies of water)
To expand what RuyanVe said, most of the maps in the PDFs have the base map (no writing) as the background image. Adobe should allow you to copy it and paste it into your favorite image editor (Photoshop, GIMP, MS Paint... whatever) for cleanup and printing. I'm not sure if the location dots would copy over or not as I've not tried it with this map.
Liz Courts Contributor |
Miranda Silva |
So... that cover... what happened to Lyrie's clothes?
She's an academic researcher who is employed for her magical nous but apparently she dresses like a Calistrian temple girl?
This kind of verisimilitude-breaking, porn-tastic art is really annoying.
That rendition of her is not that far from how she was depicted in Pathfinder #1.
Also, considering her personality it kinda makes sense that that she would dress "slutty" as she has big low self-esteem issues. Many girls with low self-esteem issues dress "slutty" as a means to draw attention to themselves, which is particularity tragic since she is pretty brilliant. I've know more than one girl who was really smart but thought boys wouldn't like them for their brains so they dress sexy and played dumb. I have a feel Tetsuo likes girls like that. It's a nice quirk in her character and I'm glad they didn't change that.
ShadowFighter88 |
So... that cover... what happened to Lyrie's clothes?
She's an academic researcher who is employed for her magical nous but apparently she dresses like a Calistrian temple girl?
This kind of verisimilitude-breaking, porn-tastic art is really annoying.
She seems about as covered as she used to be - what fabric was lost from her top got added to the sides of her skirt.
Twigs |
(though a bit sad if it means certain artists' work is gone entirely)
Arnold Tsang's stuff was so goddamn cool, in my opinion. And to me this new art strikes me as "cartoonier" than his, which I think was the general complaint with his stuff. (Still, it's important that it matches the general Pathfinder aesthetic, and cool cats like us can still scavenge the old art).
That said, beside myself with glee to see a certain other artists work gone. The warchanter art was pretty shocking.
Also ohako, if you're still around, I'd LOVE to see that finished map if you can figure it out, I want to run this for new players too so a simplified gazeteer would be a really nice tool. Your choices look great for locations. I'll give you my two cents on the matter if you're still looking for suggestions.
Locations: Humans - I'd add Turtleback Ferry and an origin point for Shoanti PCs to that list, and perhaps another village or two (Nybor springs to mind for half-elves). You could probably drop Korvosa if you wanted.
Your choices for Gnomes and Dwarves look solid, but I'd just mark Crying Leaf for Elves.
I'd also include Windsong Abbey as an origin point for religious PCs.
I'd love to see your finished map!
Nukruh |
Huh does anyone else have the little square maroon box that says rise of the runelords campaign traits over the top of the upper right corner of the Sandpoint map? seems like it should be at the top of the previous page.
You have to look at it, like a book spread, with 2 page view (with show cover on).
GeraintElberion |
GeraintElberion wrote:So... that cover... what happened to Lyrie's clothes?
She's an academic researcher who is employed for her magical nous but apparently she dresses like a Calistrian temple girl?
This kind of verisimilitude-breaking, porn-tastic art is really annoying.
That rendition of her is not that far from how she was depicted in Pathfinder #1.
Also, considering her personality it kinda makes sense that that she would dress "slutty" as she has big low self-esteem issues. Many girls with low self-esteem issues dress "slutty" as a means to draw attention to themselves, which is particularity tragic since she is pretty brilliant. I've know more than one girl who was really smart but thought boys wouldn't like them for their brains so they dress sexy and played dumb. I have a feel Tetsuo likes girls like that. It's a nice quirk in her character and I'm glad they didn't change that.
Wow, I just checked and you're right, I has misremembered her appearance.
I guess the first portrait is a kind of side-angle which drew my attention to her wand and face. This cover puts her cleavage in the visual centre of the image and has her open up her body (with a weirdly contorted arm) to make sure you don't miss it...
I guess that means that her clothing in the first one seems pretty terrible too but the art just didn't draw my attention to it in the same way.
She lives in a dungeon surrounded by goblins, her spell book does not contain any 'comfort' spells like endure elements... maybe she puts it all out there when Tsuto comes a-calling but mostly she's just got Orik and Nualia to hang out with. I'm not saying she's got to dress in a spacesuit. You can still have an attractive, potentially seductive mage without giving her such daft clothing.
Kthulhu |
Awesomeness. I finally will be able to figure out how to shoehorn all our goblin PCs into this campaign settings.
/Knows goblin's are hated
//DM knows goblins are hated but letting us play one anyway
///Will save the town anyway because We Can.
I have the perfect motivation. Save the town, because nobody else gets to burn it down but YOU!
RuyanVe |
You have to look at it, like a book spread, with 2 page view (with show cover on).
What does that do, exactly? The box is still there, and I still find it annoying, aka too big compared to the space available at the right margin of the page.
Or is it supposed to be some kind of book marker which you see (in theory - not applicable here, due to too less pages, I'd guess) from the side?Ruyan.
Enlight_Bystand |
Those conerned about the odd page image in the players guide, if you look at the picture here you can see something similar, but more detailed. It looks like it's got the image of the original cover and the some subheadings - I'd make a guess at the parts within each adventure.
ohako |
Mikaze wrote:(though a bit sad if it means certain artists' work is gone entirely)Also ohako, if you're still around, I'd LOVE to see that finished map if you can figure it out, I want to run this for new players too so a simplified gazeteer would be a really nice tool. Your choices look great for locations. I'll give you my two cents on the matter if you're still looking for suggestions.
Locations: Humans - I'd add Turtleback Ferry and an origin point for Shoanti PCs to that list, and perhaps another village or two (Nybor springs to mind for half-elves). You could probably drop Korvosa if you wanted.
Your choices for Gnomes and Dwarves look solid, but I'd just mark Crying Leaf for Elves.
I'd also include Windsong Abbey as an origin point for religious PCs.I'd love to see your finished map!
Hi, Twigs, thanks for the +1. I tried Thorkull's suggestion of grabbing the 'background' image out of the PDF, and all I got was this weird shadow image of just the coastline, and GIMP's PDF importer will just flatten the whole thing, text and all.
So, what I should be able to do, if I had the base image, would be to decorate it with just the locations I wanted (using GIMP), because
a) you can tell what fonts are embedded in a PDF by exploring the 'options' in your PDF reader of choice
b) With luck, Paizo used a freebie font to decorate this map, because who wants to have to pay to license fonts?
And once I had just my simple locations, I could hand out successive maps with cute little Indiana Jones-style dotted red lines whenever the PCs went somewhere new.
Thanks for the suggestions for more 'starting' locations. I think I've got my list, because for me nine is plenty. I don't need my players reading too much goop, and they're only going to get a +1 to Knowledge (geography) from picking one anyway. I'd be happy to share how it's done, in any case.
So...anybody know where/a good way I can to lay my hands on a 'text-less' Varisia map?
EDIT: Ah, that map's font is called 'Jubliee', and it ain't free, apparently. Weeelll, Black Chancery's kinda close, I guess I could use that.
another edit: bwahaha! Thorkull's technique does work! Eeeexcellent...
HangarFlying |
Fwiw, I used the Varisia map from the original Player Guide. I only did descriptions for a handful of locations though, the ones listed above and one or two more. I ripped the traits and character tips from the new players guide and ripped the Sandpoint section from the old players guide. I added a two-paragraph write up about why the characters are in Sandpoint: a blurb on the Late Unpleasantness and a blurb on the ceremony/festival. In all, it came to be 10 pages (including a title page containing the sihedron rune ripped from #1. Oh, I ripped the Sandpoint map from the new guide too.
Leopold |
Leopold wrote:I have the perfect motivation. Save the town, because nobody else gets to burn it down but YOU!Awesomeness. I finally will be able to figure out how to shoehorn all our goblin PCs into this campaign settings.
/Knows goblin's are hated
//DM knows goblins are hated but letting us play one anyway
///Will save the town anyway because We Can.
That's the plan. We are all about revenge in killing other goblins who attempt to burn down and take what is rightfully ours to take and burn down.
I had to write up a nice page of backstory to rope all 4 of the PCs together to get 2 goblins and 2 gnomes to work together. It was a work of desperation but the DM ran with it as everything came out of this PDF and is valid.
Leopold |
So... that cover... what happened to Lyrie's clothes?
She's an academic researcher who is employed for her magical nous but apparently she dresses like a Calistrian temple girl?
This kind of verisimilitude-breaking, porn-tastic art is really annoying.
Sex sells flat out. The closer you get to soft core porn the better sales will get. Hollywood knows this and so does Paizo.
I too am bored to tears of this, but what is one voice versus hundreds or thousands that get excited by scantily clad women on the cover of gaming books and drop their hard earned money on it.
Does it detract from the overall product? No, not at all. Garish yes, tiresome yes, well done, for fanta-porn, sure.