The Stars Are Right

Havn't been more excited for any other AP ever.
I love Rule of Fear.

How are the chances that we'll get the Players Guide a few days before the street date of AP #109?

Thank you for making this AP!

I'm very excited for this one.

We're just finishing Kingmaker (2 days to go!) & then we'll be alternating between Mummy's Mask & Strange Aeons.

MM will use the standard tactical, grid based combat, but for Strange Aeons, I'll be converting over to Narrative Combat. Our group gets too bogged down with tactical play (up to 40 minutes per turn in Kingmaker), so I want to speed things up significantly.

How are the chances that we'll get the Players Guide a few days before the street date of AP #109?

Quite good :)

Great reading list!

If you finish all those, check out Ambrose Bierce for more cosmic horror.

Marco Massoudi wrote:

How are the chances that we'll get the Players Guide a few days before the street date of AP #109?

Quite good :)

You mean it is pretty much ready, there won't be another Humble Bundle kind of thing during launch date, etc???

It is a shame we never got that "At The Mountains of Madness" movie directed by Del Toro.

I would add, "Notebook Found in a Deserted House." By Robert Bloch to that list as well.

I might also recommend "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," by Harlan Ellison. The latter also is probably a good one for, the Second Darkness and the Iron Gods AP's.

... you taunt us ...

BRING.

IT.

ON.

The Strange Aeons Experiment

I cancelled my adventure path subscription because of this AP. If I'd wanted to play Call of Cthulhu, I'd be playing that RPG, not Pathfinder.

I cancelled my adventure path subscription because of this AP. If I'd wanted to play Call of Cthulhu, I'd be playing that RPG, not Pathfinder.

I agree - if I wanted to play CoC, I would grab my Chaosium CoC books and run that system.

My GM has already been adding a lot of Mythos-inspired stuff to our S&S campaign, so I'm pretty sure he's read everything on that list at the end by now. This is certainly going to be an interesting AP.

Oh god, the Doom that came to Sarnath is suggested reading? And here I was already planning to play a half-mad Ib-Hybrid style cultist summoner.

Time to start getting excited.

this AP isn't Call of Cuthulhu, it's Pathfinder with a Mythos theme.

This exactly. Playing CoC is completely different from "let's hack and slash through the Bestiary monsters based on Lovecraft".

I subscribed to the adventure path specifically because of this path. I subscribed previously through five adventure paths but stopped after Carrion Crown because what followed wasn't matching my group's interests. I am whole-heartedly back again with this one.

I cancelled my adventure path subscription because of this AP. If I'd wanted to play Call of Cthulhu, I'd be playing that RPG, not Pathfinder.

Except this isn't Call of Cthulhu. CoC is about puny, terrified humans armed with knives, revolvers and perhaps some unreliable magick up against things that come from beyond. It's a game about hopeless horror in face of the cosmic unspeakable.

Whereas Pathfinder is about SUMMONING HOSTS OF SOLARS WHILE THE VIVISECTIONIST ALCHEMIST TEARS THE STARSPAWN OF CTHULHU A NEW ONE AND THE CATFOLK ARCANIST CASTS QUICKENED MAXIMIZED ENERVATION ON THE DIMENSIONAL SHAMBLER AND ALL THE WHILE, YOUR GODS GOT YOUR BACK AND WON'T LET ANY HIGH PRIEST OF A REMOTELY RELEVANT ENTITY FROM BEYOND THE STARS MESS UP THEIR TURF.

Basically, Strange Aeons will be about throwing Lovecraft and high-powered fantasy into a blender. It's something totally different from purist Call of Cthulhu.

Call of Cthulhu would be a very different feel if the setting even posited something like a level 20/mythic 10 human being even capable of existing. It would remove a lot of the whole dread of humankind's futile struggle for brief existence in an indifferent and hostile universe.

Even if Strange Aeon PCs' experience isn't quite as Gorbacz describes, and is generally more horrific and surreal than your average AP, the world itself isn't out to get them in the same way that it is in CoC.

I mean, in CoC learning more about the true nature of reality(Mythos Knowledge) impacts your character's sanity because the true nature of reality is inimical to human thought. Even if you use the Horror Adventures sanity rules you're not going to get that vibe with a fantasy Lovecraftian adventure. A writhing mass or tentacles emerging out of the sky just doesn't have the same impact on a person from a world with teleport, darkmantles, aboleths, and such as it would on some average schmuck in a more realistic world.

Horrors from beyond time might indeed be scary and threatening to the inhabitants of Golarion, but they aren't going to rewrite an observer's entire paradigm of reality the way they would appearing to an Earthling.

That having been said, if this AP isn't for you, that's cool. Play what you like.

Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Putting this one on the growing backlog of cool APs I need to run. Damnit Paizo, I can't possibly have time to run every awesome thing you put out, but this has my interest, especially since Wes is involved.

I'm really looking forward to this AP. However if this:

surf a blood tsunami

gives me nightmare-flashbacks about Escape from L.A., I'll be sending Paizo my therapist's bills.

I really want to run this as soon as I get my hands on it. However I kickstarted sandy Petersens guide to Cthulhu monsters for pathfinder and it won't ship until December assuming it's on time. So I think I will wait and plot and see what December brings.

The debate here brings back fond memories of Beyond the Supernatural, aka CoC where you can indeed strike back at the monsters :-)

Will this be released in a non-euclidean box set?

I'm really looking forward to this AP. However if this:

Masterflumph Theater narrator wrote:

surf a blood tsunami

gives me nightmare-flashbacks about Escape from L.A., I'll be sending Paizo my therapist's bills.

Honestly I thought it was meh. Blood surf or not.

Great reading list!

If you finish all those, check out Ambrose Bierce for more cosmic horror.

That list could be soooo much longer, but it's a good start (and most relevant to the adventures... hint hint). But, yeah, Bierce is great, especially when you realize that he (and Robert Chambers) were laying the groundwork decades before the folks that really blossomed the genre.

I cancelled my adventure path subscription because of this AP. If I'd wanted to play Call of Cthulhu, I'd be playing that RPG, not Pathfinder.

I'm sorry to hear that. I know that not everything we put out is ideal for everyone. However, I'd like to personally tell you that this Adventure Path is not us trying to ape the Call of Cthulhu RPG. This Adventure Path is fully Pathfinder with strong cosmic horror and occult elements that follows a storyline that would be easily found within the vast Mythos genre. You still get to fireball monsters and slice into weird creatures with a greatsword. There's not even a hardcoded sanity mechanic (though you can use the one from Horror Adventures as an option).

While I'm sorry that this isn't your thing, I wanted to have the chance to post this reply for not only you, but for anyone else who was concerned about this particular Adventure Path because I know you're not alone.

Belabras wrote:

Great reading list!

If you finish all those, check out Ambrose Bierce for more cosmic horror.

That list could be soooo much longer, but it's a good start (and most relevant to the adventures... hint hint). But, yeah, Bierce is great, especially when you realize that he (and Robert Chambers) were laying the groundwork decades before the folks that really blossomed the genre.

Minor derail - The Ballad of Black Tom is a take on the genre from an oft unexplored and long overdue perspective. Well worth the read.

Scott Romanowski wrote:

I cancelled my adventure path subscription because of this AP. If I'd wanted to play Call of Cthulhu, I'd be playing that RPG, not Pathfinder.

Except this isn't Call of Cthulhu. CoC is about puny, terrified humans armed with knives, revolvers and perhaps some unreliable magick up against things that come from beyond. It's a game about hopeless horror in face of the cosmic unspeakable.

We actually had a great game of Cthulhu Now (w stuff from Twilight 2000) with GI Joe vs Cobra. Cobra found some vs bad Cthulhu stuff and Destro was trying to find out just what he had found and then what he could do with it and of course GI Joe had to step in and save the day.

MDC

Now, this is no reason for concern. I assure you that the Strange Aeons Adventure Path is fairly benign. You will not go mad from reading it; the books won't flap themselves from your shelf and scuttle about your home in the stygian hours of the night while you slumber—dreaming of things far more horrific, no doubt.

For some reason, my level of concern did not lower.

Will this be released in a non-euclidean box set?

With a plush Puppy of Tindalos?

Edit: Ooo, Shibe Puppy of Tindalos?

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die though, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa

My old live GM actually started working on a heavily Lovecraft-inspired Pathfinder game about a month before I found out about this. Haven't started it just yet, but I'm always up for anything Lovecraft.

This almost makes me want to end my Kingmaker AP early so we can start this! I've been looking forward to this since it was announced. I am such a happy little gug!

This almost makes me want to end my Kingmaker AP early so we can start this! I've been looking forward to this since it was announced. I am such a happy little gug!

Hell no. Kingmaker was amazing. Take your time and enjoy it, then by the time you are done, Strange Aeons will be done 100% and you can tackle it with all the info you need to make it epic.

From past personal experiences, I've found that being able to read through a whole AP before running it is always a good call. Finish off Kingmaker, buy and read all the Strange Aeons volumes, and by the time you end Kingmaker, you've got a fine AP to present to your players.

Actually looking at the oath against corruption paladin archetype it seems one of the best choices for a deity in this adventure might actually be shelyn,

Reasons?

1. She is the only non-lawful deity listed under the oath archetypes suggested.
2. Her brother was corrupted whilst in the dark tapestry so a personal vendetta would be there.
3. She is about the natural beauty of the world and the deities in this pantheon are about twisting it.
4. He faithful also act as psychiatrists for those who dealt with encounters like this if they don't go normally to an asylum.

Surprisingly a goddess like shelyn may be perfect for this adventure.

From past personal experiences, I've found that being able to read through a whole AP before running it is always a good call. Finish off Kingmaker, buy and read all the Strange Aeons volumes, and by the time you end Kingmaker, you've got a fine AP to present to your players.

My regular Pathfinder group is wanting to run Strange Aeons as freshly as possible, so I'm looking at DMing it starting one week after the Player's Guide is released (got a subscription on another account, so hopefully module 1's pdf will get here with plenty of time for me to read through and prepare content). Is it just generally inadvisable to do so, or bad for a specific reason in this campaign?

As long as you and your group are adaptable, running as it comes out works fine. I've just found from past campaigns that the better I can know the whole story the better I can weave things into the characters from the start.

As long as you and your group are adaptable, running as it comes out works fine. I've just found from past campaigns that the better I can know the whole story the better I can weave things into the characters from the start.

I agree. Because if something happens in module 4 you can place something in module 2 to help with it and or simple add in encounters in previous modules/time lines to help flesh out things in later times lines.

But I can also really understand if you just cannot wait and jump right in ... even before the Gm has read the module (if you can find such a GM that is).
MDC

I'm sorry to hear that. I know that not everything we put out is ideal for everyone.

Thank you Adam.

More detours please!

IMHO Paizo has been taking many "detours", diluting what was a great FRPG. Science fiction, occult, and horror are three of the themes I don't want in my FRPG. It's just my personal preference. I wanted to post because so many of the other posts were enthusiastic, and most people that see something they don't like simply pass over it, without taking the time to leave feedback.

The thing to keep in mind (as I'm sure you do since you cited personal preference) is that Paizo caters to a wide range of gamers with many different tastes and preferences, including many with a love for sci-fi, horror, firearms, pirates, kingdom building, Oriental adventures, ancient Egypt, and so on. Hell, one of the most popular adventure path installments...

You have every right to make your displeasure known. Absolutely. This is also part of the reason why Paizo so far hasn't altered their concept of two adventure paths each year. If you don't like something, chances are relatively decent that you'll like what comes next or what came before.

Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die though, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa

With melody

From past personal experiences, I've found that being able to read through a whole AP before running it is always a good call.

This. So much this.

From past personal experiences, I've found that being able to read through a whole AP before running it is always a good call.

Does it mean we will see more Hell's Vengeance games pop up now?

Look to the sky, way up on high
There in the night stars are now right.
Eons have passed: now then at last
Prison walls break, Old Ones awake!
They will return: mankind will learn
New kinds of fear when they are here.
They will reclaim all in their name;
Hopes turn to black when they come back.
Ignorant fools, mankind now rules
Where they ruled then: it's theirs again

They will return.

The characters wake up in an asylum with no memory of how they got there and only hazy recollections of who they are. This kind of start requires a fair amount of trust of the GM and of the Adventure Path. You can still create a character with a complete backstory, but know that some things happened in your character's past that are beyond his or her control.

While I'm going to encourage my players to not all try to play The Nameless One from Planescape Torment I won't mind the occassional jokes about "updating my journal."

Drive us by pitchfork to caves by the sea
Atop the mountain, under cities
We are monsters, we are older than men
Yes, we are Gorgons and we will have our revenge

This world was ours before it had ever known men
And soon it will be ours again
Soon it will be ours again

This is the most interesting AP since Iron Gods, IMHO.

I wonder how many Rust Cohles and Marty Harts will be run through this? :)