Pathways #1 (PFRPG) PDF

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Showing you the Rite Pathways for the Taking!

How can you say "No" to a collection of Pathfinder Roleplaying Game haunts and templates, high-level foes and minor constructs, feats and domains, and all of it bundled together with a collected view of upcoming third-party products for the Pathfinder RPG? You'd have to be crazy to turn it down.

Rite Publishing brings you Pathways, a free 'zine packed with plenty of Open Game Content for you to take to the table. You'll find articles by Jonathan McNulty (Coliseum Morpheuon), T. H. Gulliver (#30 Haunts for Ships and Shores), Robert Emerson,and Steven D. Russell. Also you will find a retrospective look at the best third party products of 2010 by Endzeitgeist and Dark Mistress, and an interview with over 11 different Pathfinder-compatible publishers—including Dreamscarred Press, Open Design, and Super Genius Games!

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Excellent FREE E-zine. Check it out!

5/5

This pdf is 56 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD and 12 pages of ads (unless I miscounted), leaving 40 pages containing articles, so let's dive in!

First of all, let me say that I'm not entirely impartial on this one due to having my top ten-list herein, but this is free, so why care? Especially when on pages 7 and 8 you can get a nice "Spirit of the Endtimes"-haunt after yours truly? Kidding aside, though: T.H.Gulliver knows how to write great haunts and the innovation of associated haunts has been a total blast for me. I'm extremely delighted to report that this one, even if it were not a homage to yours, ranks among the creepiest, most visual haunts I've read so far and I hope that it will kill one of my players someday. It consists of three separate haunts, appropriately dark and even slightly Lovecraftian in theme. The haunts have CR 3, CR 3 and CR 4 and you should check them out. And kill a PC with them as soon as possible.

After that, you'll get the Corruptor Creature template (1 page), followed by a gorgeous 1-page full-color illustration of Kauriel, the Enabler (the guy on the cover), followed by his CR 22 statblock complete with lore section and whatever else you desire about this cute Advanced Corruptor Pit Fiend (Infernal Duke).

Jonathan McAnulty brings you 3 holy texts for clerics of Air, Clouds and Wind, along 4 new feats:

-Cold Air Caster: When casting a spell or channeling energy to deal cold damage, you may switch that with electricity damage and vice versa.

-Hot Air Caster: When casting a spell or channeling energy to deal fire damage, you may switch that with electricity damage and vice versa.

-Wind Grappler: Use channel energy to improve your grappling.

-Wind Walker: Add half your class-level to acrobatics-checks regarding jumping, fall 5 ft. per class level less.

We also get two domains for usage with the great Divine Channeler-class from RiP's "Secrets of Divine Channeling", the Cloud and Wind domains. Nice additions to this great book!

Page 19 -21 detail a new creature or rather 7 new ones, the "Eyes of Sin", a CR 7 construct (including rules to create them yourself!) that tries to make creatures replace their eyes with them and forces them down the path of the respective sin. Fluff for each sin is provided and they rock,a s they actually tell as disturbing account of the mad genius who invented them. Disturbing, cool, dark, free - what's not to love?

We also get a nice two-page web-enhancement for Evocative City Sites: Clockwork Tower.

Robert N. Emerson talks on three pages about evocative sites and gives advice to DMs on how to make interesting sites - an insightful piece of writing.

Pages 30 to 49 are where the pdf shines. 20 questions to some of the best-known 3pps:
- Bill Webb, Frog God Games
- Bret Boyd, Tricky Owlbear Publishing
- Creighton Broadhurst, Raging Swan Press
- Dale McCoy, Jon Brazer Enterprises
- Jeremy Smith, Dreamscarred Press
- Louis Porter Jr., Louis Porter Jr. Design
- Mario Barbati, 0one games
- Mark Gedak, Purple Duck Games
- Owen K.C. Stephens, Super Genius Games
- Robert Thomson, 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming
- Steve Russell, Rite Publishing
- Wolfgang Baur, Open Design (There seem to have been space-reasons or editing glitches with some of Wolfgang's answers, though.)

Well...and then there are 4 pages of yours truly and Dark_Mistress's respective personal top tens of 2010 - I'll underline "personal" for me, as I included some 4-star reviews and left 5-stars out as this list entirely reflects my own personal preference and I think D_M operated on a similar basis.

Conclusion:

Layout is absolutely stunning and full-color, content is top-notch and this is FREE. It's very hard to beat free stuff, especially at this level of quality. And even if you only use one article once, this still should be worth the space on your HD.
If you need an additional incentive: Yours truly is inside, so it can't be bad.
My final verdict is, of course, 5 stars.


Pathway to Stars

5/5

Pathways #1 is a free e-zine by Rite Publishing's Steven D. Russel and David Paul. The mission statement for the publication is to (quoting David Paul) "bring [...] industry interviews, sneak peeks from the writers, designers and developers themselves, previews of material that's just around the corner from its release date, original articles from freelancers and more."

The e-zine numbers 56 pages, of which 12 are full page ads, 40 contain articles, leaving just 4 for cover, table of contents, obligatory license and short editorial. The PDF comes with 16 bookmarks for easier navigation.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

Fine articles, great art and news make for good stuff.
The only bad thing is that the large amount of art results in page flipping. Fortunately, the bookmarks lessen the impact of this issue.
The ugly aspects... well, I'm not really sold on Black Chancery font used for headers, there are some small inconsistencies in layouts. Minor stuff, and general improvement trend in overall quality continues.

THE HIGHLIGHTS

Here is a list of items which really caught my attention:

1. The cover. The visuals hit like a hammer. And in a good way. The red guy gets reused for your viewing pleasure on page 11.

2. The ad for Wanted: Makesh. Stylish.

3. Pages 10 to 13: yet another complicated stablock NPC. Rite Publishing guys should be awarded renown points for tackling such creatures.

4. Pages 19 to 21: Eyes of Sin. Diminutive construct eye replacements which control their owners.

5. Pages 30 to 49: Twenty questions to 3rd party publishers. Lovely interview. Features the following folks:
- Bill Webb, Frog God Games
- Bret Boyd, Tricky Owlbear Publishing
- Creighton Broadhurst, Raging Swan Press
- Dale McCoy, Jon Brazer Enterprises
- Jeremy Smith, Dreamscarred Press
- Louis Porter Jr., Louis Porter Jr. Design
- Mario Barbati, 0one games
- Mark Gedak, Purple Duck Games
- Owen K.C. Stephens, Super Genius Games
- Robert Thomson, 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming
- Steve Russell, Rite Publishing
- Wolfgang Baur, Open Design (minor nitpick: Wolfgang was beheaded a bit)

6. Pages 51 to 54: Top 10 of 2010 by Thilo "Endzeitgeist" Graf and Dark Mistress. Two separate lists by most prolific reviewers of Pathfinder products. While it would inconceivable for me to agree with every choice (Tales of Old Margreve not within top ten? Harrrumph! Come on, Thilo, you can do better than this. And, why so many item catalogs in top ten? Adventuring is not about shopping, Dark Mistress), this made me browse Paizo's shop immediately.

VERDICT

Highly recommended. 5 stars.

Regards,
Ruemere



I wanted to thank the fine folks at paizo for getting this up.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Nice to see it here too.


Great review, ruemere! And thanks for the kind words!

With regards to my list: As the Spirit of the Endtimes, I'm just more personally attached to the things that lie sleeping beneath the waves than to the primordial forests. ;)

Kidding aside: I wanted to include ToOM, but I already had Alluria's Fey-book and Retribution, both featuring the old-world-vibe and absolutely wanted Sunken Empires in there...so there you go. :)

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Nice review Rue.

Pfft adventuring not about shopping? You need good gear to survive in the dungeons, so you can get gold, so you can go shopping for gear, so you can survive dungeons... aventuring is ALL about shopping. :)


Dark_Mistress wrote:

Nice review Rue.

Pfft adventuring not about shopping? You need good gear to survive in the dungeons, so you can get gold, so you can go shopping for gear, so you can survive dungeons... aventuring is ALL about shopping. :)

I approve of this comment. :D


I wanted to thank Ruemere for taking the time to do a review of our product. I am glad our layout has improved enough so that our biggest layout Critic enjoys it both for its layout and its content.

And Yeah LPjr layout is always stylish, you know its good when and AD gets a compliment.


Gals and Guys,

I just tried to do justice to the initiative :). No need to thank me.
It's my opinion that revived d20 needs a news zine - community sites, like Paizo messageboards, help tremendously, but the real refinement comes with periodical publications. The Wayfinder is fine, but it comes out a bit too randomly to provide updates on regular basis.

Regards,
Ruemere

Liberty's Edge Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012

Ruemere, I'm glad to see that you liked the Eyes of Sin article. Thanks!


taig wrote:
Ruemere, I'm glad to see that you liked the Eyes of Sin article. Thanks!

I need to admit something - I'm an ex-GM for Kult RPG [1].

These barkeresque constructs of yours are going to be treasured and then unleashed through series of retrospections upon some hapless wretch.

Regards,
Ruemere

[1] Kids/folks who do not like disturbing themes - this game is definitely not for you.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Nice review end.


Dark_Mistress wrote:
Nice review end.

+1


Thx! After some Raging Swan Stuff, I'll start reviewing 0onegames files, i.e. Urban Creatures & Lairs and even some more stuff. :)


Thanks for taking the time to do another review, End.


I'm on a rampage and I'll try to get more out as soon as I can. :) Thanks for putting out so many great pdfs, Steve. (I think that RiP and Raging Swan are the leadings 3pps with regards to high scores from me...)

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