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I used to subscribe to a bunch of lines, but cancelled when I was saving up to go overseas on university exchange for a year. I keep thinking I should subscribe again (Reign of Winter and Wrath of the Righteous really tested my patience) but I'm not working as much as I used to so I probably shouldn't... I've started numerous APs though, both on the GM and player side, just never gotten really far, yet! I'm tempted to buy a shirt or the folio for rerolls. :)
I'd love the spirit animal to be an animal companion instead of a familiar, as an aside... except rather than it becoming like a combat brute, instead provides various spirit-related abilities. I'm pretty sure this is what some other 3PP shaman did. I'm leaning towards Open Design, but I'm not sure.
Erik: Probably the rest of the 10% comes from the hundreds of thousands of undescribed commoners walking around the streets, the thousands of scarcely-mentioned craftsmen and women or merchants the PCs might only briefly interact with, and the hundreds of noble families that make up all the aristocracy. It's not about being closeted - it's that it's never been particularly relevant to the story. An occasional important NPC is queer (such as in the case of your king's grandson). Most of the rest of the time, it just never comes up. Maybe you chuck in a lesbian couple running the orphanage or something, if it becomes relevant. The fact that you have occasional appearances is basically enough to say "These people exist in this world!". You don't need to explicitly specify when one character is queer or not (much like you probably don't explicitly specify when one background NPC is of a given race or gender unless it becomes relevant). EDIT: thejeff's response makes me wonder if the issue is about historicity and/or the need for everyone to breed.
Erik, uhh, excuse me if I've got you wrong, but I don't really understand what the issue is. Right there, your example with the king's grandson being gay, but being pressured to take a wife? Sounds like interesting storytelling to me. Which side is morally right, which side will the PCs support? There are potentially even solutions that benefit both sides (encouraging the grandson to take a... hmm, male equivalent of 'mistress', or perhaps some kind of magical solution to male x male progeny). Isn't that exactly the kind of thing you want to do?
Anyone who comes to the game with a brawler without a pre-set list of feats written out for quick access is doing it wrong. If someone could not provide the rules text within a reasonable period of time I will simply have them delay until they know what they want to do. The same, incidentally, applies for ANYONE. If a summoner or conjurer came to the table without stats for their monsters and expected me to wait while they calculated the stats for their augmented fiendish giant dire platypus, they'd get a couple of minutes before I'd skip to the next person. If a druid is digging through four bestiaries looking for the perfect animal to wildshape into, I'd skip to the next person. I expect players playing complicated classes (i.e., basically all spellcasters) to have a pretty decent grasp of what their class abilities do, and to take the initiative in having things prepared for odd situations.
Did I miss anything or are the only changes the later level abilities and the weapon proficiencies? Martial Maneuvers is still way too limited in terms of uses per day. I think the class should get Knowledge (Local) instead of Knowledge (History). Agreed with Rynjin that it needs a way to get around Combat Expertise feat tax.
That said, I am putting the finishing touches on my homebrew's Obsidian Portal page and looking to get recruiting started there in a week or two. I won't be offended if someone else wants to GM, but I definitely want to pull my weight. I just know that from February to mid-April I'm usually going 65-70 hrs a weeks at work, with less time for posting. Btw Derek, any chance of a sneak preview of this? :) Really curious to see what you've been up to.
My tengu character's first mission was The Many Fortunes of Grandmaster Torch. He's hated him since, and has said that to his face on multiple occasions... and has expressed his hatred to many other NPCs as well. He hasn't even heard of what happened in Rivalry's End yet. Torch was just never a likeable character. (Nor is my tengu known for his discretion or even temper.) I feel like the only "gruff/mean" VC that works well is Ambrus Valsin. He's a bit of an ass, but not so much so that it's obnoxious. He's just efficient and incredibly competent.
No worries, Norv, I can deal with only two traits. The trait I'd have to lose is one that gives me Knowledge (Local) as a class skill, unfortunately. I'm intending on making a Brawler from the playtest, but the class as it currently stands gets really weird Knowledge skills that don't really suit it as a class (History?...).
As I'm primarily a PbPer I put a fair amount of work into making sure all my characters have interesting and detailed backstories, personalities, dreams, desires, fears, quirks, and all the lot of it. Despite the more immersive nature of PbP, it still rarely comes up... although I do especially enjoy those groups where I can go off the rails with roleplaying a little from time to time. (Heck, one semi-long-term PFS group I'm playing in potentially has a budding romance between my character and another player's!) Face-to-face games? Gods, not a chance. Pretty much no game I've played has had characters even introduce themselves beyond "Hi, my name's <x> and I'm a <race> <class>" - maybe with a "I use a <weapon>/I prefer to <fighting style>" afterwards. Let alone character quirks, let alone backstory!
Marketing isn't limited only to television or web advertisements; the article explains this... It includes things from product placement to box/promotional art to internal decisions made by marketing teams during production of a game. You're being marketed to, no matter where you come from or how many (or few) ads you see. It's not necessarily an evil thing either. It simply is. The article explains that targeting boys was a marketing decision made in the context of the times, and it probably made a whole lot of sense then. But we can see plenty of negative run-on effects of it.
No Girls Allowed - article about the history of marketing of video games (particularly in a gendered sense). "Maybe our perception of the problem is the problem, rather than there actually being a problem," says Ian Bogost. "We're not looking at diversity in the marketplace. We're looking at where there isn't diversity and we're saying those games are the most valid games."
but also it seems to intimate that these biases are transferred to the user, which I can't agree with. I never got that from her videos. I more gathered she's saying that the fact that these biases keep cropping up is more indicative of sexism in society generally - confirming already-existing biases - which I can certainly agree with. That said, the vast majority of her examples come from games that are, by the admission of anyone who has played them, utter garbage already. I EXPECT lazy, crappily written games to rely on stale old tropes and stereotypes. I'm far more appalled when new, otherwise quality games fall into those traps. There's a quite large amount of otherwise good, modern games brought up in her videos. Not sure how you can say Mass Effect 3, to take an example from the latest video, can be called crappily written or utter garbage. (Your opinion of the controversial ending aside.) I also see her attacking media that embraces those tropes and then turns them on their ear, something that I would imagine would be encouraged, but they're still in her crosshairs because they fail to meet her personal quality standard, which is as arbitrary as any. Example?
Yaoi is written (mainly) by girls for girls. Bara (much more porny) is the one written by men for men and the one with massive amounts of beefcake. BL (short for 'boys love', commonly known as yaoi here) is indeed largely written by and for women in Japan. It's really quite interesting, academically speaking, in that regard, as the whole scene essentially arose from self-published works in a rather sexually repressed society. In a way it was a "harmless" way for the girls to have an outlet for their sexuality [not in a homosexual way necessarily, mind you]. And it's become a MASSIVE industry. I entirely disagree with Amaranthine's suggestion that bara is "more" porny than BL, though. Bara is basically the gay man version of BL and, yes, is pretty damn porny. Think bears and muscular/fat dudes as a rule of thumb, and I'm sure your imagination can fill in the rest. But damn can regular BL get filthy. I suppose it's just that, typically speaking, bara is all porn, all the time, whereas BL will (usually) try to weave in a story and some feelings/emotions before they get down to the dirty business. Interestingly, yuri (girl-on-girl) was originally written by women for (heterosexual) women as well, and was generally much more innocent/pure than BL stories were. Modern yuri has changed a lot though (for the better in my opinion), but it's still actually often consumed by heterosexual women. Anyway! You'd be surprised at how many women authors there are out there. Perhaps less common in terms of what becomes popular over here in the west - especially as you are a grown adult man and are unlikely to be reading the stuff aimed at little girls :)
Hopefully we can stay civil so we don't wind up having an explosion like the last thread about these videos. I haven't been bringing them up because it seems like most public forums can't discuss them at all. Beefcake and Cheesecake is the same cake. Not really. Speaking as a woman who is not really into dudes... my credibility is kind of crushed here. :P But there is a huge difference between cheesecake and "beefcake" how it is presented in the gaming industry. Sexy women are there for gratification of the (ostensibly male) viewer. Buff, strong, heroic men are ALSO there for the gratification of the (ostensibly male) viewer. The hot chick is the sex appeal, while the buff guy is the hero fantasy. You obtain the girl (hence the objectification), while you become the buff guy (hence why it's not objectified - you have volition and action). If it was the same thing as cheesecake but targeted at the female gaze, you would have much different looking dudes than the stock-standard edgy-looking buff white guys with a stubbly beard we see in every freaking game. The poses would be different, the framing of the imagery would be different. Have a look at real beefcake targeted at women (I am thinking of, for example, promotional pictures of various bands/actors/etc that you might see in a magazine)... it is totally, totally different. For one, I suspect they would be less "buff muscular dudes" than most vidya gaem heroes tend to be. But I'm not going to pretend I know what straight girls are into. :P There's nothing wrong with hero fantasies and there's nothing wrong with sex appeal, but there IS something wrong with only heterosexual men being able to enjoy the full spectrum of that.
Not sure if this has been touched on, but how does Swashbuckler Initiative interact with Wave Strike? At 3rd level, while the swashbuckler has at least 1 panache point, she gains a +2 bonus on initiative checks. In addition, if she has the Quick Draw feat, her hands are free and unrestrained, and her weapon isn’t hidden, she can draw a single light or one-handed piercing weapon as part of the initiative check. If on your first turn of combat you draw a melee weapon to attack an opponent within your reach, you can spend a swift action to make a Bluff check to feint against that opponent. Seems like a feat that would be up the Swashbuckler's alley, but I don't think you can take a swift action during your initiative check, making it kind of useless...
To defend dien (while also taking a gander over at their discussion thread), I'm pretty sure it's because all the original players bar one seem to be dropping out, something that hasn't been clear up until this point. That sort of loss is incredibly demoralising to a GM - basically all the work that's gone into the game already down the drain... and that's a lot more work than a single level 6 character! (Not to mention you can easily reuse your applications!)
My group (while it lived; unfortunately university tends to get in the road of playing for extended periods) stuck with Dex to ranged attacks (including thrown attacks) and Wis (general Perceptiveness and clear-mindedness) to Initiative indeed, which turned out to my liking! Worth a shot for anyone not too fussed on Wis to ranged attacks. Str to thrown weapons I like in concept, but I honestly just prefer a single attribute for ranged attacks - it makes it easier to remember. That and it also gives Str-based warriors the ability to now have a pretty damn strong ranged option out of the box and allowing them to relatively ignore their Wis/Dex scores... I think I'd prefer people to consolidate stats using a feat rather than it being "free". I've been thinking of making/posting a few random characters of mine under the Kirthfinder ruleset after my exams are over. Easy way to find some oddities in the rules as well as providing GMs with some example NPCs to steal. :)
Here's a Brawler build I made! It's meant to be a comparison to a character of mine I loved who was a Fighter/Monk. I don't know if she's particularly "optimised", but she sure looks fun. :)
I feel like the bonus feats come in at awkward levels. 2nd, 5th, 8th, 11th... All the Greater maneuver feats are available at BAB+6, meaning you just miss out on them and have to wait an extra level after a fighter could pick it up. Kind of lame for the supposed maneuver master. A couple of other maneuver-related feats come online at BAB+9, too, iirc - although this isn't as bad as the BAB+6 point because at least you get the level 9 feat. But not being able to pick up Greater maneuver feats until 7th really bites.
There's also a preview of... The Investigator. This class blends together elements of the alchemist and the rogue to make for the ultimate sleuth. Using extracts, sneak attack, and a new mechanic called inspiration, the investigator is skilled at putting together clues, finding hidden foes, and striking enemies with precision. Think of him as part Sherlock Holmes, part Doctor Jekyll. Using inspiration, the investigator can add a bonus to certain skill checks, saving throws, and even attack rolls. Awful name though. Like many of the other hybrid classes announced so far.
Something like that, yup. Provided you don't go walking in thick bushland without hiking boots on, it probably isn't a big deal. :P I've seen red-belly black snakes and brown snakes, and provided you don't provoke them they're not a big deal. Same with the spiders... pick 'em up and move 'em outside if they bother you. They only bite if you threaten them in the first place. Just don't go swimming in far north Queensland... crocs are a serious threat, unlike the other things.
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