|
Someone has to say it.
ahem
Cool art on these guys though! :)
Player Interactions seems to look to cover ground a bit more frankly than 3.5's DMG 2... I can already ID two characters from Darths & Droids going off of that preview page.
Some of those sample NPCs being so far apart from each other in terms of page numbers has me curious about what will be found around each one. edit-Ah, nm. Finally got savvy to that picture only showing a part of the chart. I'm still curious about the NPCs that are in the same "families" as Doomsayer, Torturer, and Village Idiot.
Awesome! This ships tomorrow right?
Something by you guys designed to help DMs is a great development. There's space waiting in my mailbox for this!
This is really RC's day (as I'm listening to AA.)
Joys of owning a B&M retail outlet; already got copies on hold! Told 'em as soon as they were in, I wanted 'em! ^_^
This is really RC's day (as I'm listening to AA.)
New Know Direction and new Atomic Array on the same day? It's like Christmas!
I am sooo looking forward to this!
Maybe I am missing something, but one of the NPCs on that list indicates "Conjurer" as its class. What is that? A new class in the GMG? Or just a specialist Wizard?
Most impressive thing here to me is the inclusion of tables that actually list potions by name, so you don't have any more arguing about which spells can be made into them! We did the same thing on Sunken Empires: New spells? These are the ones that qualify as potions! No more flipping around between the spell listing, the magic item chapter and the brew potion feat!
|
Maybe I am missing something, but one of the NPCs on that list indicates "Conjurer" as its class. What is that? A new class in the GMG? Or just a specialist Wizard?
As I understand it, there won't be any new classes in this book. Advanced Player's Guide is really the book for that.
That said, I'm super stoked about the many NPC stat blocks. Should be very helpful to us GMs. Of course, I could've used them 5 days ago when I had a bunch of city guards fighting the heroes. :)
Just wait until you hear everything Wes has to say about the GMG.
A huge thanks to gentleman and scholar Mr. Costello for letting me ramble on and on about this book. I had a blast and Ryan was a fantastic host. Can't wait to give it a listen!
Someone has to say it.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! ETC. Awesome.
I hope the spellcheck underlines aren't in the finished book!
I hope the spellcheck underlines aren't in the finished book!
What, you don't want those in there? I thought they'd be super helpful!
:P
Creative Director
|
Only 80-plus stat blocks? I'll be interested to see what happened to the other 30ish or so.
SO.
MANY.
STAT BLOCKS.
(it may have just been shaved down by having 3 per group instead of 4)
Three per group. We sort of forgot that having an illustration of each type of NPC effectively eats up the room for that 4th stat block.
The left-over stat blocks are in our vaults on our computers, waiting for another chance to see the light of day. If folks really like having NPC stat blocks set up like monsters... let us know!
I would really like to see this made available. Like the Bonus Bestiary, only with NPCs. The Bonus NPCiary?
We'll see! At the moment we're not looking to add additional projects or new ways to challenge our editors and developers. In general we always try to make sure we have more content than we need - as opposed to not having enough - but there's still a LOT of work that would go into making any unpublished statblocks worth purchasing or downloading.
More likely than some slapdash, unproofed, undesigned PDF is adding any overage into a future thematically appropriate product - but we have no plans for that at the moment. Rest assured, though, that nothing is wasted, and our freelancers are well paid for all of their efforts...
...And their discretion.
Some of those characters seem to be a bit high level. Is the average torturer, traveling merchant or archeologist really 7th level? Seems that a 7th level example of one of those professions would be actually pretty exceptional.
|
Creative Director
|
Some of those characters seem to be a bit high level. Is the average torturer, traveling merchant or archeologist really 7th level? Seems that a 7th level example of one of those professions would be actually pretty exceptional.
Depends on your game. This is why there's a LOT of choices for NPCs in the book.
Also, low level NPCs are easier to whip together, and therefore not as necessary to have predone stat blocks.
ALSO: The NPC guide is filled with dozens of low level stat blocks already. If you're looking for low CR NPCs, that's a good book to pickup. The NPC stats in this book are intentionally built to cover a wide spread of CRs, from CR 1/3 or so up to CR 14 or so.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
|
I would really like to see this made available. Like the Bonus Bestiary, only with NPCs. The Bonus NPCiary?We'll see! At the moment we're not looking to add additional projects or new ways to challenge our editors and developers. In general we always try to make sure we have more content than we need - as opposed to not having enough - but there's still a LOT of work that would go into making any unpublished statblocks worth purchasing or downloading.
More likely than some slapdash, unproofed, undesigned PDF is adding any overage into a future thematically appropriate product - but we have no plans for that at the moment. Rest assured, though, that nothing is wasted, and our freelancers are well paid for all of their efforts...
...And their discretion.
Tru dat. The author gets paid for the assignment... whether or not the assignment ever ends up seeing the light of day. It might show up in a later product. Or it might get round-filed. Or it might get massaged into something rather different by the time it appears.
I had probably 4 pages of stuff from the Campaign Setting that got zapped by the page count monster, 30-odd extra stat blocks here, etc. It happens. That's part of being a pro about it, though; not getting your knickers in a twist when the editors or developers take your original turnover in a different direction (including the 'recycle bin' or 'deep storage' directions). You had a job and you did it the best you knew how and then you let it go and wait with curiosity to see what it'll look like when it comes back. And you got paid for it, so you move on to the next job, which in my case is...
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!!!
P.S. Sometimes the eds don't necessarily love what an author turns over too, so having some extra does help compensate for any necessary slicing and dicing that needs to be done. If a chunk of your turnover blows chunks, then the eds have extra material to cover it up! Yay cover-ups! :)
|
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
|
Some of those characters seem to be a bit high level. Is the average torturer, traveling merchant or archeologist really 7th level? Seems that a 7th level example of one of those professions would be actually pretty exceptional.
For most of the "families" of character types, there was one low level (1st-2nd), one mid (3-5), one medium-high (6-9), and one high (10+). Some families were all lower level, and some all mid-level.
Trust me, there are puh-lenty of basic archetypes. If the one with the *name* you're looking for seems a little too high level, you should have little trouble finding the *function* you're looking for in a differently named NPC with pretty similar relevant skills.
|
Know Direction episode 10 is live![/url]And a great show indeed - so much information about the upcoming core rulebook!!
Please do another one on the APG :-)))
Thank you, but an interview is only as good as the answers the guests gives. Wes was loaded with juicy information and ready to pour it out.
As for the APG, I spoke with Jason Bulmahn about it in Know Direction 007, but the APG was much more a work-in-progress versus the practically-released GMG.
|
The left-over stat blocks are in our vaults on our computers, waiting for another chance to see the light of day. If folks really like having NPC stat blocks set up like monsters... let us know!
Yes please!
I usually prefer generic NPCs that are handy for quick reference and will stat out unique personalities myself. But, yeah lots and lots of interesting generic NPCs is VERY useful.