Worldscape Workbook—Inside Issue #2!

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

The second issue of Dynamite's sword & sorcery superstar crossover series, Pathfinder Worldscape releases TODAY in comic shops, and is now shipping from the paizo.com store! The issue features a foreboding jungle adventure in which Seoni the sorcerer awakens in a deadly dimension that harvests the deadliest warriors of three worlds. Before she can reunite with her friends Valeros, Kyra, and Merisiel, she must first survive the jungle alone. Her adventure sees her face a 10-legged Barsoomian banth, the mysterious forest goddess (and first female super-hero in history) Fantomah, Frank Frazetta's jungle lord Thun'da, and Tars Tarkas, the green Martian best friend of John Carter of Mars.

Like all Pathfinder comics, Pathfinder Worldscape #2 contains a short Pathfinder RPG rules appendix and a pull-out poster map. The poster for the issue continues the jungle scene presented in Pathfinder Worldscape #1, with a focus on an immense tree with ritualistic significance. You can put each of the two maps together to create a double-sized jungle encounter!

The text of issue #2's RPG appendix focuses on green Martians, everyone's favorite four-armed original creations of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars novels. I'd originally intended to include stats for Tars Tarkas himself in this issue, but the background of the race and its various abilities ended up hogging up so much space that Tars himself will appear later, most likely in issue #5, where the character again plays a significant role. This issue is more about creating the rules elements that I'll later use to make that character, as well as a couple of weapons that will also come into play next month, when we get to John Carter himself.

I used the race builder rules from the Advanced Race Guide hardcover to build the green Martian rules. As with previous Worldscape adaptations, I let the source material dictate my choices. For example, Large size and four arms are both extremely "expensive" traits in the race builder system (because of their significant impact on play), and those two powers alone make the green Martian a 15-point race, putting them on par with something like the fetchling or suli (by contrast, a halfling is 9 points).

But there's more to green Martians than their arms and size. There's also their ability to detect thoughts, their weapon familiarity with longswords and spears, their legendary ferocity, and a few other powers to boot. At the end of the day, green Martians are more like 23-25 points, putting them on par with the likes of svirfneblin (24) or trox (28), but well short of drow nobles (41).

The issue also includes rules for Barsoomian radium pistols and rifles, but I'll discuss that more in future blogs.

I've been very pleased by reaction to the first issue of Pathfinder Worldscape. I can't wait to hear what you think of issue #2, and look forward to hearing about your green Martian Pathfinder heroes and villains for years to come!

Until then, I remain...

Erik Mona
Publisher