(although I like to think I could be EVERYONE'S friend, the internet's good at reminding me that's probably unlikely).
You can be MY friend, James!
And as friends, will you teach me the eldritch ritual that I need to leap forward through time to the exact moment when my subscriber copy of the Advanced Class Guide will be available for download?
Creative Director
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(although I like to think I could be EVERYONE'S friend, the internet's good at reminding me that's probably unlikely).You can be MY friend, James!
And as friends, will you teach me the eldritch ritual that I need to leap forward through time to the exact moment when my subscriber copy of the Advanced Class Guide will be available for download?
Yup! All you had to do was ask. Alas... its a complex thing, that ritual. I can't really tell you here, but I can give you a link to it.
James,
Hope you're doing well today!
What is your favorite part of world building?
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Where is Ragathiel worship most prominent? Obviously one of the centers of his worship is in Magnimar, but where else is there? And here comes the inevitable: Was his faith in Sarkoris? Or did they favor more Chaotic Empyreal Lords, given that Pulura-worship was big there.
Which Empyreal Lords were most commonly venerated in Sarkoris anyway?
(although I like to think I could be EVERYONE'S friend, the internet's good at reminding me that's probably unlikely).You can be MY friend, James!
And as friends, will you teach me the eldritch ritual that I need to leap forward through time to the exact moment when my subscriber copy of the Advanced Class Guide will be available for download?
Yup! All you had to do was ask. Alas... its a complex thing, that ritual. I can't really tell you here, but I can give you a link to it.
Must... run... Council of Thieves for the Hypnotoad....
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Creative Director
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Where is Ragathiel worship most prominent? Obviously one of the centers of his worship is in Magnimar, but where else is there? And here comes the inevitable: Was his faith in Sarkoris? Or did they favor more Chaotic Empyreal Lords, given that Pulura-worship was big there.
Which Empyreal Lords were most commonly venerated in Sarkoris anyway?
It's not really most prominent anywhere. Not to the extent that it's something someone would notice on a national scale, at least. There's certainly a village or small town or something out there somewhere in the Inner Sea region that has an unusually large number of Ragathiel worshipers, but until we need to invent that location for an adventure, I'm not sure where it would be. Maybe Galt or Andoran or Isger? Dunno.
Pulura was the empyreal lord most widely worshiped in Sarkoris. The others were not significantly worshiped enough to have one be mentioned more than the others... with the POSSIBLE exception of Cernunnos.
And to be honest...
Wes is the one who wrote the chapter on Sarkoris in Lost Kingdoms.
Wes is the one who outlined Chronicle of the Righteous.
Wes is the one who invented the term "Empyreal Lord" and made up a lot of them in the first place.
I think, perhaps, you're asking the wrong person these questions... ;-)
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Where is Ragathiel worship most prominent? Obviously one of the centers of his worship is in Magnimar, but where else is there? And here comes the inevitable: Was his faith in Sarkoris? Or did they favor more Chaotic Empyreal Lords, given that Pulura-worship was big there.
Which Empyreal Lords were most commonly venerated in Sarkoris anyway?
It's not really most prominent anywhere. Not to the extent that it's something someone would notice on a national scale, at least. There's certainly a village or small town or something out there somewhere in the Inner Sea region that has an unusually large number of Ragathiel worshipers, but until we need to invent that location for an adventure, I'm not sure where it would be. Maybe Galt or Andoran or Isger? Dunno.
Pulura was the empyreal lord most widely worshiped in Sarkoris. The others were not significantly worshiped enough to have one be mentioned more than the others... with the POSSIBLE exception of Cernunnos.
And to be honest...
Wes is the one who wrote the chapter on Sarkoris in Lost Kingdoms.
Wes is the one who outlined Chronicle of the Righteous.
Wes is the one who invented the term "Empyreal Lord" and made up a lot of them in the first place.
I think, perhaps, you're asking the wrong person these questions... ;-)
Alright, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
What Lost Kingdoms WOULD be easier for you to answer questions about?
Do you have any unofficial fluff on Obox-ob? I think he's a really cool Demon Prince but there doesn't seem to be much official fluff on him (FCI seems to be the most substantial...)
1) I suspect a qlippoth and demon actually talking to each other would be so rare, and would involve such unusual personalities on each side of the conversation that it'd be impossible to guess what they'd be saying to each other.
Daemon, not Demon. As in the denizens of Abbadon who want to kill everything. I don't expect a demon to be willing to let a qlippoth say five words before killing it, or vice versa.
What is your most frustrating video game experience?
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Creative Director
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Where is Ragathiel worship most prominent? Obviously one of the centers of his worship is in Magnimar, but where else is there? And here comes the inevitable: Was his faith in Sarkoris? Or did they favor more Chaotic Empyreal Lords, given that Pulura-worship was big there.
Which Empyreal Lords were most commonly venerated in Sarkoris anyway?
It's not really most prominent anywhere. Not to the extent that it's something someone would notice on a national scale, at least. There's certainly a village or small town or something out there somewhere in the Inner Sea region that has an unusually large number of Ragathiel worshipers, but until we need to invent that location for an adventure, I'm not sure where it would be. Maybe Galt or Andoran or Isger? Dunno.
Pulura was the empyreal lord most widely worshiped in Sarkoris. The others were not significantly worshiped enough to have one be mentioned more than the others... with the POSSIBLE exception of Cernunnos.
And to be honest...
Wes is the one who wrote the chapter on Sarkoris in Lost Kingdoms.
Wes is the one who outlined Chronicle of the Righteous.
Wes is the one who invented the term "Empyreal Lord" and made up a lot of them in the first place.
I think, perhaps, you're asking the wrong person these questions... ;-)
Alright, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
What Lost Kingdoms WOULD be easier for you to answer questions about?
Although I didn't actually write any of the articles in that book, Thassilon would be the one I know the most about.
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Creative Director
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Do you have any unofficial fluff on Obox-ob? I think he's a really cool Demon Prince but there doesn't seem to be much official fluff on him (FCI seems to be the most substantial...)
No fluff, because I hate that word. I do have a LOT of unpublished flavor for him though; he's been the primary bad-guy deity in my homebrew since 1984 or thereabouts, after all.
Not really interested in sharing that stuff though at this time...
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Creative Director
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1) I suspect a qlippoth and demon actually talking to each other would be so rare, and would involve such unusual personalities on each side of the conversation that it'd be impossible to guess what they'd be saying to each other.Daemon, not Demon. As in the denizens of Abbadon who want to kill everything. I don't expect a demon to be willing to let a qlippoth say five words before killing it, or vice versa.
oh. Well... kinda the same thing. Qlippoth don't play well with others.
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Creative Director
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What is your most frustrating video game experience?
Geting to the very end and realizign you can't finish the game, either because of a bug that corrupted your saves (as happened to me in Arcanum) or because the end too hard/unplayable because of earlier choices you made in the game that unknowingly to you prevented you from being able to finish (as seen in King's Quest V or Dead Space).
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Creative Director
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ISG says once the Worldwound is dealt with, Iomedae wants to send the crusaders after the devils of Infernal Cheliax. How will the Order of the Godclaw (and the other Hellknight orders) react to this?
Good question! They'd likely end up having a schism and losing their Iomedae members, or the Iomedae members would convert, or the entire organizaiton would go rogue and they'd lose the Asmodeus members, or something along those lines. They would not emerge unscathed in the end.
Who's your favorite outer god?
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This.Q: If I were to ask you the absolutely most brilliant question - more so than any question you've ever been asked on this thread - what *EXACTLY* would that question be?
Follow-up: And what would be the answer to that question?
Clicking this at 330 am with my headphones on scared the s$+! out of me. :p
A lot of people ask you what AP you really want to do. I'd like to know, what's one (or a set of) AP that you want to avoid like the plague?
Depends entirely where her religion popped up. Tian Xia is bigger than 5 Inner Sea regions, after all... there's a lot of different stuff there.Mr. James Jacobs,
How would a CG demigoddess of Darkness, Endurance, and Retribution go over in Tien-Xia? Baring in mind she likes to protect those in darkness and make the darkness safe to rest in, emotional/spiritual endurance as well as physical, and just retribution not vengeance.
Let's say Minkai pre Jade Regent and post Jade Regent?
Do you have any unofficial fluff on Obox-ob? I think he's a really cool Demon Prince but there doesn't seem to be much official fluff on him (FCI seems to be the most substantial...)No fluff, because I hate that word. I do have a LOT of unpublished flavor for him though; he's been the primary bad-guy deity in my homebrew since 1984 or thereabouts, after all.
Not really interested in sharing that stuff though at this time...
This implies that you might be interested in sharing it at a later date. If so, any predictions for when? What form would this take (as in, posted freely online, an official product, etc?).
Also, what do think of these two homebrew Thrall of [Demon Lord] prestige classes:http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?301271-Demonic-Thrall s-(3-5)
?
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Geting to the very end and realizign you can't finish the game, either because of a bug that corrupted your saves (as happened to me in Arcanum) or because the end too hard/unplayable because of earlier choices you made in the game that unknowingly to you prevented you from being able to finish (as seen in King's Quest V or Dead Space).
I'm pretty sure I know about the bug in Arcanum (it happened to a friend of mine too, which is a shame, because that was a neat game), but what choice did you make in Dead Space that prevented finishing the game, and, on a related note, what did you think of Dead Space overall?
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Some party related questions:
1) Do you feel that synergy among a party's members is important in a game?
1a) And if so. How can a GM encouraged such synergy without making it feel like it is forced upon them.
Edit: By Synergy, I mean having party members that are able to work together to pull of combos like a Paladin build to encourage enemies to engage him, while a Cleric follows up with Holy Smite. Or w Liberation domain Cleric working with a Wizard casting web to lure and trap enemies.
2) Do you ever feel that giving total freedom (other then alignment choices) in character making is a bad ideal?
3) If a party feels "slanted" towards certain classes/roles, aka there are too many casters, there are no blasters or the whole party are martial with no healer whatsoever, etc. What would you do to make the game enjoyable? Encourage players to try out other classes? Adapt the campaign to work with non-typical party? Kill of the extras, until the party "gets it"?
Hi James...hope you are doing well on this Friday
Some quick horror-related Questions:
1. Have you read much Laird Barron, and if so what do you think?
Related to the above:
2. Belphegor is a re-occurring "Lovecraftian" entity in much of his fiction. And he is also an entity in real life demonology. Does Belphegor exist in the Great Beyond cosmology?
3. If he did exist, What sort of demigod level being would best fit him? Qlippoth Lord? Demon Lord? Great One? Something else entirely?
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Although I didn't actually write any of the articles in that book, Thassilon would be the one I know the most about.Where is Ragathiel worship most prominent? Obviously one of the centers of his worship is in Magnimar, but where else is there? And here comes the inevitable: Was his faith in Sarkoris? Or did they favor more Chaotic Empyreal Lords, given that Pulura-worship was big there.
Which Empyreal Lords were most commonly venerated in Sarkoris anyway?
It's not really most prominent anywhere. Not to the extent that it's something someone would notice on a national scale, at least. There's certainly a village or small town or something out there somewhere in the Inner Sea region that has an unusually large number of Ragathiel worshipers, but until we need to invent that location for an adventure, I'm not sure where it would be. Maybe Galt or Andoran or Isger? Dunno.
Pulura was the empyreal lord most widely worshiped in Sarkoris. The others were not significantly worshiped enough to have one be mentioned more than the others... with the POSSIBLE exception of Cernunnos.
And to be honest...
Wes is the one who wrote the chapter on Sarkoris in Lost Kingdoms.
Wes is the one who outlined Chronicle of the Righteous.
Wes is the one who invented the term "Empyreal Lord" and made up a lot of them in the first place.
I think, perhaps, you're asking the wrong person these questions... ;-)
Alright, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
What Lost Kingdoms WOULD be easier for you to answer questions about?
So what was daily life for the average Thassilonian citizen like? We've heard about their wizards and their giants, but what about the average joe?
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Creative Director
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If those crusaders include the WotR's mythic PCs, would Cheliax have anything that could do more than inconvenience them? It seems like they'd have to summon an archdevil or swarms of dukes just to match them, and I don't think Cheliax has the ability to get that much aid, do they?ISG says once the Worldwound is dealt with, Iomedae wants to send the crusaders after the devils of Infernal Cheliax. How will the Order of the Godclaw (and the other Hellknight orders) react to this?Good question! They'd likely end up having a schism and losing their Iomedae members, or the Iomedae members would convert, or the entire organizaiton would go rogue and they'd lose the Asmodeus members, or something along those lines. They would not emerge unscathed in the end.
Infernal Dukes, archdevils, armies... yes they would and could. And honestly... it might end up worse off for the people of Cheliax if Mythic PCs escalate Cheliax's agenda by forcing them to get desperate enough to pull out the really big guns... which is appropriate, because that makes it even more difficult to pull off.
AKA: If you're running a mythic adventure with mythic heroes, the villains get to be as powerful as you need them to be. That's how the game works.
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Creative Director
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A lot of people ask you what AP you really want to do. I'd like to know, what's one (or a set of) AP that you want to avoid like the plague?
Yes, there is. Several. Many of which are ones that people think they want, but that I'm 99% sure that if we gave it to them, they'd realize they were wrong and didn't want it after all.
And no, I'm not gonna say what they are, because I might change my mind, and because I don't want to start hollow crusades or crush hope.
oh. Well... kinda the same thing. Qlippoth don't play well with others.1) I suspect a qlippoth and demon actually talking to each other would be so rare, and would involve such unusual personalities on each side of the conversation that it'd be impossible to guess what they'd be saying to each other.Daemon, not Demon. As in the denizens of Abbadon who want to kill everything. I don't expect a demon to be willing to let a qlippoth say five words before killing it, or vice versa.
Actually, that meeting might be even worse than the Qlipploth / Demon one, James. According to Bestiary 2, the qlipploth hate daemons because they believe that the daemons had something to do with the Abyss learning how to transform mortal souls into demons. It even goes as far to say that if the qlipploth ever wiped out mortals (and thereby ended their demon problems), their next focus for their hatred would be all of daemon-kind.
This isn't a question. Sorry. You're always saying that its hard for you to keep tabs on things that you didn't directly work on, so I thought you might enjoy this tidbit of info. Please, don't sick the Hypnotoad on me again!
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James now that the module line has been revamped somewhat, will there be modules that tie in to APs maybe prequels or sequels?
Plunder & Peril can augment Skull & Shackles... but a module that actually leads into an AP storyline or continues it after is VERY unlikely, since that'd be something the AP developer would have to develop OR it'd mean the modules developer would have to read and become intimately familiar with an entire AP in order to know what was going on. And both of those tend to require more time than either developer has available.
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Creative Director
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Let's say Minkai pre Jade Regent and post Jade Regent?Depends entirely where her religion popped up. Tian Xia is bigger than 5 Inner Sea regions, after all... there's a lot of different stuff there.Mr. James Jacobs,
How would a CG demigoddess of Darkness, Endurance, and Retribution go over in Tien-Xia? Baring in mind she likes to protect those in darkness and make the darkness safe to rest in, emotional/spiritual endurance as well as physical, and just retribution not vengeance.
If we did something like this, it wouldn't tie directly into Jade Regent's plot, and would probably not involve itself much with Minkai's government at all so that you could easily adapt the adventure to run before, during, or after your home game's Jade Regent game as you see fit.
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Creative Director
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James if a jiang-shi druid wild shapes into an animal, do it still move around by hopping? And if so is this a silly idea?
He does not. It's silly. Jiang-shi are kinda silly anyway though.
Except for in Rigor Mortis. They're pretty awesome in there.
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Creative Director
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Do you have any unofficial fluff on Obox-ob? I think he's a really cool Demon Prince but there doesn't seem to be much official fluff on him (FCI seems to be the most substantial...)No fluff, because I hate that word. I do have a LOT of unpublished flavor for him though; he's been the primary bad-guy deity in my homebrew since 1984 or thereabouts, after all.
Not really interested in sharing that stuff though at this time...
This implies that you might be interested in sharing it at a later date. If so, any predictions for when? What form would this take (as in, posted freely online, an official product, etc?).
Also, what do think of these two homebrew Thrall of [Demon Lord] prestige classes:http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?301271-Demonic-Thrall s-(3-5)
?
What it implies is that a LOT of the material I originally created for Obox-ob that I didn't sell to Wizards of the Coast is material that I have been and am still retrofitting to work for Rovagug for Golarion. Which is weird, because in my homebrew, Rovagug is ALSO a deity, so I've been kinda merging him and Obox-ob over the years. Someday down the road I might start posting more of my homebrew stuff on my blog or whatever as curiosities for people to see as historical stuff... but no plans to do so right now.
And I try not to do reviews or critiques or feedbacks on design work, mostly as a time-management thing, but also for legal reasons, sorry! I would post those homebrew thralls to one of the feedback threads here to get community feedback if I were you.
If we did something like this, it wouldn't tie directly into Jade Regent's plot, and would probably not involve itself much with Minkai's government at all so that you could easily adapt the adventure to run before, during, or after your home game's Jade Regent game as you see fit.Let's say Minkai pre Jade Regent and post Jade Regent?Depends entirely where her religion popped up. Tian Xia is bigger than 5 Inner Sea regions, after all... there's a lot of different stuff there.Mr. James Jacobs,
How would a CG demigoddess of Darkness, Endurance, and Retribution go over in Tien-Xia? Baring in mind she likes to protect those in darkness and make the darkness safe to rest in, emotional/spiritual endurance as well as physical, and just retribution not vengeance.
I wasn't thinking of tying it to Jade Regents plot. I was using it as state of the nation indicator. Since they would be in different states depending on time and outcome of the AP.
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Creative Director
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Geting to the very end and realizign you can't finish the game, either because of a bug that corrupted your saves (as happened to me in Arcanum) or because the end too hard/unplayable because of earlier choices you made in the game that unknowingly to you prevented you from being able to finish (as seen in King's Quest V or Dead Space).I'm pretty sure I know about the bug in Arcanum (it happened to a friend of mine too, which is a shame, because that was a neat game), but what choice did you make in Dead Space that prevented finishing the game, and, on a related note, what did you think of Dead Space overall?
I thought Dead Space was EXCELLENT. Dead Space 2 was better because it was just better overall. Dead Space 3 was fun, but the microtransactions really soured me on the experience to the extent that I'm unlikely to keep playing the franchise.
The thing that happened in Dead Space to me was the following:
The game gives you several different types of weapons to use, but also relatively limits the amount of ammo you have and tailors the drops to the weapons you decide to carry. The way the final boss battle worked is set up so that if you had one specific type of weapon, the battle was tough but managable. If you happened to spend the game using any other combination of weapons that didn't include the key weapon needed for the boss fight, you simply lacked the right tool for the fight and it became SUPER hard.
It's like I was building a house, and the manual gave me 6 tools to choose to build it, and I picked the hammer and the saw and got real good at it, and the plans allowed me to progress with those tools. But when I got to the last point of the project, it became apparent that to FINISH the house, I needed a wrench. I could TRY to use a hammer or saw for this final task, but it was so insanely hard and annoying that I decided to abandon the 99% finished house and crossed the street to build an new house with an entirely different set of tools.
Weird metaphor complete.
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Creative Director
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Some party related questions:
1) Do you feel that synergy among a party's members is important in a game?
1a) And if so. How can a GM encouraged such synergy without making it feel like it is forced upon them.
Edit: By Synergy, I mean having party members that are able to work together to pull of combos like a Paladin build to encourage enemies to engage him, while a Cleric follows up with Holy Smite. Or w Liberation domain Cleric working with a Wizard casting web to lure and trap enemies.
2) Do you ever feel that giving total freedom (other then alignment choices) in character making is a bad ideal?
3) If a party feels "slanted" towards certain classes/roles, aka there are too many casters, there are no blasters or the whole party are martial with no healer whatsoever, etc. What would you do to make the game enjoyable? Encourage players to try out other classes? Adapt the campaign to work with non-typical party? Kill of the extras, until the party "gets it"?
1) Yes. More so synergy among PC personalities and themes than synergy among PC rules and abilities, but all is important. It's a teamwork-based game, after all. The way you mean, with abilities working together, I don't think is super important for the game, but it's nice when it happens.
1a) By offering bonuses and boons to PCs if they choose certain combinations. This is what we do with Campaign Traits—by linking desirable (if minor) boosts to your stats, we suggest players pick story-based rules elements that help tailor their characters to the AP at hand. And beyond that, building a Player's Guide for your players that lays out the "best choices" for your particular game you've got planned helps a lot.
2) Yes, unless you luck out and get a group of players who are more interested in building characters who work together thematically than they are in trying to build a singular hero who happens to be traveling with sidekicks. I really REALLY prefer to run games with a few relatively strict guidelines, like, "You can make whatever character you want, as long as they're humans" or "you can do what you wish, but you all worship Sarenrae" or "Build the characters you want, but you're all from Sandpoint." Giving the players a few shared restrictions helps to keep them cohesive and prevents what I call "Circus Syndrome," where you have a group of adventurers who are so mismatched and ill-suited to traveling together that the group dynamic itself breaks verisimilitude and becomes overwhelming to all else.
3) I adjust the game to compensate. If no one makes a healer, I make sure that there are NPC healers aplenty and throw a lot more potions of healing into the treasure. If there's no strong melee characters, I adjust encounters so that melee isn't required. If there's no arcane spellcasters, I make sure there aren't situations that can only be solved via arcane spells. And in fact, I really REALLY enjoy running games for non-standard "fighter/wizard/thief/cleric" parties.
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Hi James...hope you are doing well on this Friday
Some quick horror-related Questions:
1. Have you read much Laird Barron, and if so what do you think?
Related to the above:
2. Belphegor is a re-occurring "Lovecraftian" entity in much of his fiction. And he is also an entity in real life demonology. Does Belphegor exist in the Great Beyond cosmology?
3. If he did exist, What sort of demigod level being would best fit him? Qlippoth Lord? Demon Lord? Great One? Something else entirely?
1) I've read some of his short stories, own several of his books, but haven't read enough yet. I intend to remedy that eventually.
2) I'd say yes.
3) My preference would be Infernal Duke.
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So what was daily life for the average Thassilonian citizen like? We've heard about their wizards and their giants, but what about the average joe?
That's not a question I can really answer without writing a multi-thousand word article that would require a lot of research and creativity, nor is it something I want to "strand" in one of the largest threads on these boards, frankly.
The brief version? Stressful and unrewarding and frustrating and scary. Thassilon is very much a place where the haves have it all and the have-nots are in dire straits... as one would expect in a nation ruled by sin-mongering evil wizards.
Weird metaphor complete.
Weird metaphor? I'm pretty sure that happened to me on a summer job I worked in high school. :P
What it implies is that a LOT of the material I originally created for Obox-ob that I didn't sell to Wizards of the Coast is material that I have been and am still retrofitting to work for Rovagug for Golarion. Which is weird, because in my homebrew, Rovagug is ALSO a deity, so I've been kinda merging him and Obox-ob over the years. Someday down the road I might start posting more of my homebrew stuff on my blog or whatever as curiosities for people to see as historical stuff... but no plans to do so right now.And I try not to do reviews or critiques or feedbacks on design work, mostly as a time-management thing, but also for legal reasons, sorry! I would post those homebrew thralls to one of the feedback threads here to get community feedback if I were you.
Ah I see.
I wouldn't dream of asking you to do an in-depth critique of some homebrew off the net. I know you're very busy. As the Demon Princes of the prestige classes were ones you worked on (Dwiergus and Ugudenk), my intention was more to see if you thought the flavor and abilities were cool and fitting with your "vision" of the characters. A quick once over sort of thing.
Anyways, thanks :).