I think it doesn't really matter who the consultant they've used is, or who the individual lawyers are to be honest. I'm much more interested in any comments we end up getting from the union on how any negotiations end up going and then any visible changes we see at the end of the process. Any professional they'd hire is ultimately working for Paizo, so the real test comes down to what Paizo have actually tasked them with. And I think our best guide on that will be any comments we get from the Union on the process and then comments from the Union and hopefully Paizo staffers past and present on whatever changes actually happen.
But I think the forums are a much better place than they have been, not because of my polite discourse, but because those acting in bad faith were shown the door.
It's a sobering thought.
Hmm
I think your call for polite discourse is still super important for making the forums somewhere people want to actually be longer term Hmm. I think it's just that there were some other pieces that needing tidying up too. The forums hadn't been doing so well at enforcing consequences for people who purely wanted to stir the pot (at least in terms of their interactions with minority groups), and all the good will in the world isn't going to be able to moderate things where the discussion is essentially between 'I believe this' vs 'I don't really believe you should be allowed to exist'.
But there will always be plenty of areas where even posters properly respecting the rights of others are going to disagree with each other, and sometimes strongly. Being able to have friction in a community whether discussing politics or rpg rules is important, and your tips on navigating that are still useful for disagreement that will still be there even once bad actors as above have been moved on.
I'm delighted to hear this, I think removing some persistent negative voices will improve the community greatly. I really think stronger consequences for this kind of thing will make a nicer community and less mod work in the long run.
Spoiler for personal anecdote:
I had stepped away from the forums quite a lot after the political threads were banned a few years ago. Not because of that ban itself (I understand the mods have enough to deal with really!), but I felt like a lot of the problems with them had been caused by a small group of consistent 'bad actors' who didn't really face meaningful consequences. I really didn't like seeing people who I felt had consistently tried to shut down marginalised voices effectively 'winning'.
Oh, that's so sad to read that Steve has left. I hope that some people at least take what he was saying here to heart. This is my first post in over two years, but I've been checking the boards the last couple of weeks after I was dismayed to hear about the recent issues at Paizo and wanted to learn more. Honestly my first step to trying to get a handle on things was specifically looking at posts that Steve (and one or two others) had made since I've always found his opinions valuable.
Totally understand needing to step away from the forums, but Steve will be greatly missed here.
I don’t think I’m getting any more minis and I don’t think I’m getting my money back. I have an ongoing relationship with Paizo and my confidence in them has been dented - this project has already impacted on my support for Paizo-licensed kickstarters. Without sounding too accusatory of him, I’d like to hear why ND were given such backing from Paizo since from my perspective there wasn’t any grounds for confidence in them.
“Sorry, my bad” might be all he can say (and that would disappoint me), but I’m hoping to hear a more thorough explanation of what went wrong.
Obviously I'm nothing to do with Paizo and this post is pretty old now, but as someone who was a big fan of Paizo at the time, and who had a number of positive projects fulfil with Soda Pop in the past, I did feel that there were grounds to have confidence in them and I'd like to share that perspective, though I certainly grant there were potential risks too.
With their first few projects (the original Super Dungeon Explore with CMON, the second they ran themselves, and the Ninja All-Stars project) the pattern of the company had been to release stunning miniatures, generally great board game components, and pretty darn uninspired rules. After the Super Dungeon Explore Legends project did so well, they seemed to realise poor rules had held them back and had pledged to make the rules better this time. But it seemed like they were struggling to succeed at that.
Their first Kickstarter had been pretty delayed anyway, but I still got all my things fine. So I wasn't all that dismayed that Legends was running slow. I was keen on better rules so I'd want to play the game as well as paint the figures and that seemed to be something worth waiting for.
When the Starfinder project was announced a few months later I was admittedly feeling a bit more concerned. They'd had three more projects since then, two of which were late as well (though one I think only just). I can certainly understand not backing then, but I still felt it was an acceptable risk. For all of their issues with game rules, they'd still been producing some excellent miniatures. This seemed like a sensible project for them. Get back to their core competency of making cool looking miniatures while working through the other issues the company was delayed with.
Obviously that didn't work out and we are where we are now. But Paizo also had all of the information that I had and surely a bunch more about Ninja Division's ability to fulfil at that point. I can't get too mad at them for concluding that it was still an acceptable risk. Unfortunately this just wasn't one that panned out. They should certainly look long and hard at why that was, but if it fulfilled all of their risk criteria (whatever metrics they may use for that) at the time and just went bad afterwards I wouldn't be shocked.
Speaking in general to the thread. If people want to be angry, then be angry, I can understand that reaction. But honestly for me this is much more of a sad story than one for me to be angry about. I'm certainly not happy that I'm out a lot of money with very little in return, but I think this was some people trying to make a cool product and making poor decisions along the way, not people who tried to rip me off.
I believe Jessica and Robert from what I'm reading there. Jessica's story about Frank's comments on her facebook seems to have been corroborated on twitter by Crystal too. I don't know either of them well, but I liked both Crystal and Jessica from what I saw of them on the boards and can't see any obvious gain from making up the story. Doesn't mean that I suddenly hate Paizo and I'm certainly prepared to listen to their take on why they made whatever decisions that they did, but I'm glad for this kind of thing to come out into the open. Getting awareness over things like this is the best way to hopefully eventually see them stop happening.
For people saying 'innocent until proven guilty' I don't really see how that's relevant. I'm not a judge or a jury deciding on somebody to punish, and I'm not aware that anybody here is planning any legal action on these things anyway. What I am is an RPG fan who's aware of this apparent behaviour now. We all judge the companies and the people we deal with every day based on behaviour that we witness or hear about, all without meeting legal standards of proof. I'm not saying that everybody should make knee jerk reactions, but I don't think it's right to suggest that people shouldn't be reacting to this either.
Speculative, but also explanatory, especially since upon further reading I found out Kenzer is a Lawyer with heavy knowledge of trademark law and thus knew the exact right thing to do and not do and to say and not say.
It's no less speculative, or more explanatory, than saying that WotC chose not to go after them because they knew that they (Kenzer) were completely right, and didn't want to fight a losing battle against a company that had their own resources to bring to bear.
Likewise, yeah, David S. Kenzer is indeed an IP attorney. Hence why he could so confidently say what he did...which is the same thing that I'm saying now.
But this line of discussion started with you disagreeing that the creator here needed to be very careful and conscious of her legal position. WotC chose not to go after a company run by a top lawyer who was quite ready to take things to court if they attempted to shoot him down. And Dave Kenzer went into publishing with full knowledge of the law, I presume he's already thought to be careful about any details which he needs to be careful about to keep this as a case he's expect to win.
Even Matt Finch in your quote said he thought that Kenzer would win, not that he was certain of it. That risk is one thing to take on if you're an established company with strong legal representation, it makes sense for an individual to be less keen on that fight.
in this case we're talking about a project that might bring in a few thousand dollars and already has some ambitious goals. Even if she'd win a case, fighting against a cease and desist order would still take time and money. Where does that money come from? It would certainly be better to just know what the courts will judge as legal or illegal use, but that's not how the law works right now. So if you're up against somebody with greater resources it makes sense to do everything you can to avoid getting entangled in court action in the first place.
You can easily satisfy both. You discuss it up front, then, for groups who want the GM to fudge, you don't mention it again. The illusion, during the game, can be preserved for you that way.
Refusing to discuss it at the start of the campaign -- or, worse, promising not to fudge and then doing it -- means that the people who dislike fudging have no place in the hobby.
The illusion for some people in that group has already been broken by having the conversation. A game being run with the outright statement that fudging will happen draws a different reaction to unusual circumstances than a game where the topic hasn't been addressed. Not having that conversation before the game leaves me less able to guess whether surprising events happened by GM fiat or by chance, and that's what I prefer.
It's totally fair that a lot of people don't want to have that doubt and want to be definite that fudging will or will not happen. But that just means that not everybody fits in with everybody else with their gaming preferences. There isn't a conversation that will please everybody and that's fine.
(Having played with my group for years I certainly have a feel on who likes the dice to be fudged in their favour now and then and who doesn't. If I'm running I'd take account of that preference and I think our other GMs do too. But the newer group I've joined I've never had any discussion on fudging and haven't encountered any problems.)
I was perplexed that the Electoral College system didn't get scrapped after Bush / Gore, and I remain confused by the desire to keep it around without some changes. As it stands if you're a republican in California or New York then your vote for president is simply irrelevant. Equally if you're a democrat in Arkansas or Wyoming. Why would this be a desirable thing?
The areas dominated by a certain party dilute the vote of the supporters too. Once you already know a state is going to go a certain way then more votes for either candidate mean nothing.
Surely every individual vote should have as much ability to affect the race as every other individual vote does. It feels like that should be a key feature of a democracy and it isn't like it's something that would be very difficult to change in practice either. Make it a straight popular vote or allocate the seats for each state in the proportion of the votes received. Then each candidate would need to care about everywhere and not focus on 'paths to victory' which ignore large chunks of the country.
Look, when the electoral college was formed I'm sure it was a practical solution for the country as it was then. But the world has moved on, it isn't insulting the past to suggest we have the ability to institute a more fair system now.
Personally I have little interest in seeing the moderation policies on these forums become much more codified, and I certainly wouldn't want a more comprehensive set of rules to be put up. It's impossible to capture every nuance that makes interactions a problem or not, and I think forums that try feel very unfriendly places.
At the end of the day, if I don't trust the moderators then it doesn't matter what the policies are. I wouldn't much want to post here if I didn't trust the staff anyway, and the hypothetical untrustworthy moderators could make posting life hard for me whatever the written regulations. On the other hand if I trust the moderators then I'll trust them to use their judgement whatever regulations are written down.
In any system the 'wrong' moderation result will happen now and then. Bans have happened that seemed unfair to me, while some posters have been able to keep posting who I personally might have banned. But I still like the forums a great deal, the moderators still have my trust and I like the community.
To be honest, this situation actually shows how well moderated I think the Paizo forums are. The incident in question that sparked all this wasn't hidden and a multi-page thread was allowed with a lot of back and forth on the particular issue. Even as things got heated it appears that multiple opportunities were given for people to put in their two cents. I'm sure that some people will be unhappy whatever the final outcome, but people have certainly had the chance to put the case to Paizo on whatever they think should happen.
My first RPG was playing Champions with some friends at school while I was 13.
I'd been hooked on roleplaying games on my Amiga for a couple of years though, especially the Gold Box games, Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master. I have fond memories of staying on the phone for hours with a friend as we raced to see who could finish a play through of Champions of Krynn the fastest.
But once people pick a side they ignore any information that doesn't agree with their position. I prefer not to make that mistake and consider everything on a case by case basis.
While some people certainly act this way, this isn't in any way some inherent quality of picking a side. Believing that the evidence shows that global warming is happening doesn't mean I'll ignore anything that says it isn't. If the evidence changes I'll happily change my position, but I'll choose my position based on the evidence rather than just deciding I need to be in the 'middle'. I'm not even really sure what the middle ground logically is between 'we need to do something' and 'we don't need to do anything'.
I agree with the science of global warming, but fundamentally I'd like it if we found some other explanation that means the predictions are wrong. I'd be perfectly happy to see evidence that global warming isn't real because I'd rather like it to not be real, but I haven't seen any evidence to make me think that yet.
Good vibes to the IT team from here too! The friends I put onto the bundle are waiting patiently and excited to get their hands on the pdfs once things settle down.
Oh, I'm really sorry to hear that. I didn't know him that well, but thought he seemed like a good guy and we shared a little Aussie/Kiwi banter. I was just thinking about him the other day when I realised I hadn't seen any cricket talk on here for a while. Very sad to now know why that was.
My condolences to his friends and family, and thanks for letting us know.
Really enjoyed reading the notes from everybody on their adventures in the Spire so far. I'm having a blast running it and it's been the most 'intense' campaign we've played for a long time, with death lurking around every major encounter for the not-terribly-optimised party.
I've gone off script a little bit, and was wondering if anybody might have some ideas for fleshing things out. I can go into more details, but I'll keep things brief as there's a fair amount that's gone on.
Spire and Thornkeep Spoilers and background:
In the fight on Level 3 the party ended up running from the Splinters at first and returned to take on a more organised defence. There were some memorable moments with one of the fighters getting swallowed by the Gibbering Mouther the highlight. It ended with all of the party incapacitated bar the cleric, with Tarrin Dars managing to sneak out with some of her papers after a well-timed Hold Person. Leading to the cleric swearing revenge on Dars as her nemesis.
Some time later the party visited Thornkeep to try and find relief from Hellknight taxation and to visit their friends at the Goldenfire Order. While there I had the party go on a mission to explore the Forgotten Laboratory as a favour for the Order (and so the party would learn a bit more about Nhur Athemon). In order to tie things into the Spire I also decided to make the crazed thieves other members of the Splinters, who had been sent to the Laboratory by Dars to try and find an edge.
After fighting the Mi-Go they found a diary from Tarrin Dars herself, which reflected ever more unhinged journal entries until it revealed that she had come to the Laboratory too. Worse yet discussions with the Mi-Go indicated that she now had even more heretical ideas of worshipping some kind of Norgorber / Nyarlothotep hybrid.
After leaving the Laboratory the party got word that the body of a deceased party member had been dug up in Fort Inevitable. They returned there and found that not only was their party member's corpse missing, but Lady Drovost had been poisoned and was at death's door leading to tension among the Hellknights and Signifier Hast had gone missing.
Venturing into the sewers they discovered that Tarrin Dars had secretly been buying poison from sources in the Fort, and they also heard that Dars and Hast had been meeting for some reason. Returning to the Spire they found signs of some sort of horrific ritual that had recently been carried out on Level 3 in the old Splinter den. They later found Signifier Hast in the same room where they had a memorable encounter with Klarkosh earlier. Negotiations broke down as he was trying to get information from them and lead to a battle that Hast had the better of before teleporting away.
Further spoilers (where I'm after help):
Now what the party should find out soon is that Dars has been trying to manipulate Hast's desire to learn more about the Spire so she can have him help take on her enemies. While he's still broadly sane, her warped powers have been making his hold on sanity more and more precarious and I've modified things so that he was responsible for killing Chaid DiViri in the Magma Vault (which the party have just reached).
Now I have a good handle on what will happen when the party meets Hast again, but for the eventual run in with Tarrin Dars I'm less sure. My knowledge of mechanical options outside the core could be a lot better, so I'm wondering if anybody has tips to make her a more memorable opponent. As well as adding levels to her I want the ritual to represent some kind of template having been added to her, reflecting influence from the Mi-Go and other 'outer' powers. So I'm keen to know if anybody has any neat ideas for reflecting that idea mechanically.
tldr version: How do I solve the problem of Tarrin Dars? And if anyone has any other cool ideas I'd love to hear them! Cheers for anyone taking the time to look through this. :)
It's Christmas, so in the spirit of the season time for another round of PDF giveaways. Haven't managed to actually read as many of these as I usually try to, but everything on the list is something that I think looks cool at least!
First in first served for each item on the list and limit of one choice per person. There's only one of each to give away, apart from the New Year's bonus round. I'll try to get everything out once everything from the list has been selected. Happy holidays everyone!
1) I've returned to GMing this year for the first time in years (well, started at the end of last year) and really been enjoying it. So hopefully somebody else will have as much fun running the Emerald Spire as I did!
2) They're not turtle doves, but two for the price of one with the selection getting a Black Knight and seasonal Gingerbread Kaiju from Rogue Genius Games!
10) So many Amazing Races that I couldn't decide which to give away! Pick any 4 of these from Abandoned Arts.
11) Delve into the Akashic Mysteries with the Daevic!
12) Journey to the Western shores of Midgard and set out to make your fortune.
12a) Benefit from my inability to count to 12 and enter the Stoneheart Valley from Frog God Games!
New Year's Bonus: It isn't every day that you turn 100, so I'll finish up by giving out 2 copies of A Song of Silver, the 100th of these amazing adventure paths that introduced me to Paizo in the first place!
The change that I'd most like to see and doesn't require the game to change too much is for 'mundane' characters to actually be better at mundane things than magical characters.
I really don't mind the idea that different classes play very differently, and I'm happy with the idea that some classes can change the world in some ways and others primarily react to it. But I really don't like that the wizard who spends so much time and energy studying magic usually ends up with a substantially broader range of skills than the fighter can get.
You seem to like to throw around a lot of comments about being connected to the field and apparently feeling that means we should be clinging to your every word. Do you actually know the backgrounds of everybody here, or have you just arbitrarily decided that we all don't really know what we're talking about? People aren't right or wrong because of their qualifications, they're right or wrong because of what they say (which will hopefully be informed by their qualifications and experience).
I myself have over a decade of experience as a statistical analyst working in the energy industry. I've regularly run and built specialised hydrology models, contributed to academic and industry think-tanks, produced carbon forecasts and the like, and devoted a decent chunk of my professional career to being able to understand and inform on this sort of thing. But none of that makes me right or wrong in debates here. Plenty of other people are clearly well-informed and I'm not going to go into a debate with people I don't personally know and just assume that because I know the topic I must be the most qualified here. (In fact, I very much doubt that I am.)
This debate about whether to use the acronym AGW or CC seems pretty pointless anyway. Both are terms that have been politicised, but that doesn't make them purely political terms. AGW simply means global warming caused by the actions of mankind. Quibbling over whether it's the 'best' term or not misses the point, it's something that many academics agree is happening whatever label you want to put on it.
There's been a lot of talk in here about how the complexity of privilege means that it isn't useful as an idea. But we talk about complex systems every day, as observed earlier it's the context that matters. For example the weather is an incredibly complex system, but it manages to be one of the most popular points of conversation around the world. People can comment on how the weather is today and on how awful it is, and then other people can observe the exact same conditions but enter into a discussion about how great the weather is. But that ambiguity doesn't render the weather useless as a concept.
To lurch back onto the topic of privilege it isn't some kind of scorecard where I determine I have 40 points of privilege, you have 50 points of privilege, therefore you're more privileged than me and therefore need to give me stuff. Everybody has privilege in some areas and does not have privilege in others.
And having privilege doesn't mean you can't engage in discussions where your privilege might apply, it just means that it's something worth keeping in the back of your mind. I can still talk to my girlfriend about female-only issues and she can still talk to me about male-only issues, but we also need to consider that our different backgrounds mean the male-only thing has never happened to her and the female-only thing has never happened to me.
All privilege really means is that our lives and our experiences are determined to some degree by who we are and what we look like. It's not even a matter of being harder or easier, but recognising that who I am means I've had different experiences from somebody else. My different experiences aren't better or worse than another's, but they mean that some people have direct experience of issues that I don't and vice versa. And that knowledge about different experiences should help to inform how I look at the world and how I view what others say.
I'm still not convinced that enough people will ever become vegan to render the meat industry defunct that way, seeing as that diet is simply not for everyone and not everyone has access to it for economic or health reasons even if it's what they want.
I think a more effective way to destroy the meat industry is to attack the structure of the industry itself and the structures that underlie it, but I am not educated in that matter, so don't ask me how that could be done.
Altering demand isn't the same as making the meat industry defunct. I haven't said anywhere that I think everybody is going to (or even should) move to a meat-free diet, I'm responding to Krensky's claims of hyposcrisy in vegetarians. And really, even if the meat industry is making the same amount of meat despite the people who reduce their meat intake, that increase can't be blamed on the people who are no longer eating meat.
Except not eating meat has no impact outside of your own self. that jibberish about normalising consumption of meat or whatever is just that, jibberish.
If you don not eat meat because of moral consideration that you can't say that dairy's ok or that it's ok to eat meat occasionally because eating less of it is better than eating a lot.
If you view eating meat as a moral wrong then "but I still eat it occasionally" is the same as 'killing people is wrong, so I only do it once a month'.
At least be consistent.
It's not the same thing at all. Believing that two things are both morally wrong does not mean you believe those two things to be the same level of 'wrong'. I view jumping a queue because you're in a hurry as morally wrong, and I also view killing people as morally wrong. I however feel that the punishment for killing people should be much greater than that for queue jumping.
Fundamentally, if somebody thinks that killing animals for food is morally wrong then they've improved the situation (albeit in a very minor way) by halving the amount of animals killed to feed them personally. Doing something to address a perceived problem is better than doing nothing, even if that falls short of doing everything possible.
James has said before that if he got to do things over he'd tone down the encounter with Iomedae and not have her punish the party. That's pretty consistent with the idea that they made changes to Erastil after deciding they didn't like that portrayal too. Shockingly enough they sometimes publish words that don't exactly get across the point they want, and sometimes need to provide later clarification.
You know what would be a truly massive money-maker for a scientist or a journal right now? Producing a thorough, peer reviewed article detailing why the current (and alarming) models that predict climate change are wrong. At this point there would be far more money in a scientifically valid article debunking climate change than there would be in yet another science journal article warning people about climate change.
For me, that's one of the stronger arguments why the conspiracy theories about the science being faked make no sense. At this point there is almost certainly more money in disproving climate change than there would be in perpetuating a 'false' model. At some point a large body of the multitude of 'conspirators' would have broken ranks to get some of that cash.
With point buy the decision when picking your lowest stat is is "I'm going to make my charisma a 7 because I don't need it and want my strength as high as possible". With stat rolling the decision is "my worst roll is a 7 and it needs to go somewhere, I guess I don't need charisma". The end result is the same, but the motivations and reasoning aren't necessarily the same. You also haven't lowered charisma for the express purpose of raising strength. You've put your highest stat in strength and your lowest in charisma certainly, but the scale of difference in those two numbers was decided by the dice rather than your point allocations.
Remember too that stat rolling may result in much lower or much higher average stats than point buy usually will. If you have multiple low scores or multiple high scores then the nature of dump stats changes as well. If your character is going to be great anyway due to high scores some people are more likely to make an unusual stat high for fun, knowing they'll be effective anyway. Equally if your character will have low scores no matter what you do, that may inspire a rather non-standard build too.
While I prefer stat rolling to point buy, I'm happy with either method and play games using both. You certainly can min-max when rolling stats, and you don't have to min-max when using point buy. But for me it's generally true that point buy makes my character generation process feel a bit more prescribed while stat rolling makes the process feel a bit more organic. There are times where I know exactly what I want beforehand, so I like the prescription. And others when I have no clear idea of what I want my character to be until I randomly generate the stats and use them to decide.
This really doesn't sound like a game issue to me, this sounds like a friends issue. I mean, you have player A who has suddenly apparently drastically changed in personality. He's decided to drastically change not only his own behaviour, but also his behaviour towards his friends because of what some random people at a furry convention said to him?
Player T then sounds like she's depressed and dwelling on the negative repeatedly at the game. Is this how she is all the time, or is it getting worse or better? Either way she's apparently fairly fragile right now as well for some reason.
If you're friends with these two people letting it all play out just to see what happens shouldn't be an option. You need to talk to them and work out what's going on.
Three 18's! Rather than do another tiebreaker I think I'll give away an extra copy, so that's a copy of Belkzen for MagusJanus, damnitall22 amd Tarinia Faynrik when it releases!
It's not the place to go on some anti-rogue rant either. Some people think the rogue class is underpowered and some people don't. A thread about somebody playing a fighter isn't the place for either 'side' to try and 'prove' how right their opinion is.
And I think that should be everything sent... Merry Christmas to everyone and enjoy! I'll post here in a couple of days with who gets Belkzen, in the meantime anyone else is welcome to enter the draw for it.
(On a side note I've now sent things to 40 different people with these giveaways. That's pretty cool!)
Honestly, you've got a new player excited to make his own character. I struggle to see how this is anything other than a good thing. Certainly offer to help him out if he seems unhappy with the results or just isn't very effective, but learning how the system works is part of the fun.
I'm going to take the haiku as a request for company of dragons! Added a couple of bonuses and that's everything taken! I should send things out tomorrow once the Giant Hunter's Handbook is out. And until I do the draw anyone else is free to sign up for the Belkzen bonus draw. :)
1) It's not a partridge, but The Raven's Call from Kobold Press does contain a bird to kick us off at least! - Gerald
2) What? Somebody stole the town Christmas tree? And all the presents? And there are size 1200 footprints all around? Bring me that Giant Hunter's Handbook and we'll sort things out! - MagusJanus
3) You won't find a Christmas Tree, but how about researching the Beasts of the Boundless Blue? - necromental
4) And as long as we're anywhere near the water, brush up on your nautical warfare with Fire as She Bears! - Readerbreeder
5) You think the Drow stole our Christmas tree? Well, check out the Rise of the Drow Prologue if you really insist... - Dustin Ashe
6) Sooooo... does the Player's Guide to the Crossroads say anything about which direction we go now? - Oladon
7) Ooooookay... I really don't think taking the path marked Obsidian Apocalypse is helping here! - Artemis Moonstar, lucky7
8) Though I suppose this Shadowy Keep on the Borderlands could be a hideout. - Christopher Utley
9) I hate to say I told you so, but we didn't find what we were looking for there at all! Good thing we found that friendly Company of Dragons who helped get us back on track. - Paper Crane Style Monk
10) Maybe this could be a psionic dragon? Check the Psionic Bestiary, maybe they'll be able to help us find the goodies! - DungeonmasterCal
11) You're saying that it's guarded by some kind of Mythic Monsters? But I at least get to pick which monster is the guard? - Aleron (fairy tale creatures), equinoxmaster (good creatures)
12) That was lucky that the guardians turned out to be good! Look at the Bundles of Goodies we have here. Pick one of the bundles for yourself! - Sethvir, ErockB
Time sure flies, but we're due for another 12 Days of Christmas PDF giveaway! The 12 days of Christmas items are each first come first served and limit one per person. Just post here if you want anything that hasn't been claimed yet and I'll get it out to you once everything is taken.
Since the 'Bonus Round' isn't available yet just post if you want it. Then when I send the other gifts out I'll randomly pick which two people get the pdfs. :)
1) It's not a partridge, but The Raven's Call from Kobold Press does contain a bird to kick us off at least!
2) What? Somebody stole the town Christmas tree? And all the presents? And there are size 1200 footprints all around? Bring me that Giant Hunter's Handbook and we'll sort things out!
9) I hate to say I told you so, but we didn't find what we were looking for there at all! Good thing we found that friendly Company of Dragons who helped get us back on track.
10) Maybe this could be a psionic dragon? Check the Psionic Bestiary, maybe they'll be able to help us find the goodies!
11) You're saying that it's guarded by some kind of Mythic Monsters? But I at least get to pick which monster is the guard?
12) That was lucky that the guardians turned out to be good! Look at the Bundles of Goodies we have here. Pick one of the bundles for yourself!
Bonus Round) We never did find out who took our tree and presents in the first place though... It'll take a while to get all the paperwork in order, but I want to send two of you into Belkzen to see what is going on!
Someone else brought up problems with book bindings, which I had not considered. Most of my books are pdf, and my hardbacks hardly ever see use. The AP's I have in physical form are holding up, but I hardly ever use them either. So of course I can't comment on whether it is use or quality of the binding that is the issue. I also don't know if people are taking use/handling into account, but if the binding is an issue then it should be fixed.
PS: When people say "quality" while complaining they should be more specific. What exactly is dropping is a question that should be answered. Every book has had errors, and I think the last two major releases coming back to back may have created a "sky is falling" syndrome. I could be wrong however. This is an interesting topic, so I will watch to see how the next book turns out. Other than the equipment guide, I had not really seen this much complaining about 1 product.
Most of my books are still physical and I haven't had any problems with the bindings at all. But sure, if there's an actual problem it should be addressed. I'd suggest that there are always a certain number of books in a run that have binding problems though, so you'd really need to be Paizo to see if binding issues were on the increase.
I'm pretty sure complaining in the rule book line will continue to be high. I think that's an inevitable result as the number of rule books released foes up. That doesn't mean that none of the complaints are going to be valid, but I think it's natural to expect complaints to increase from the earlier days.
Personally I haven't noticed any decline in Paizo's quality. I don't have the ACG yet so can't comment on that specifically, but I think one book with some editing problems isn't necessarily a symptom of a wider problem. I think the AP's are as great as ever, along with the world building in the campaign setting, which are the things that drew me to Pathfinder in the first place. And personally I like the other irons they have in the fire. The Adventure Card Game is great fun, and I'm really looking forward to whatever Pathfinder game Obsidian comes out with.
I'd also suggest that a complex rule system means that there will inevitably be more errors as that rule system expands. The more moving parts a system has, the greater the chance that a new rule is going to interact badly with an existing portion of it. That doesn't mean that errors aren't annoying, but increasing errors doesn't have to mean that the books are getting sloppy. It may simply be reflective of an increasing potential for errors.
Right, and I think that the Social Justice Warrior tag is bad too. It's just a label for anything that the user doesn't disagree with. I mean, is there a meaning for Social Justice Warrior beyond 'person who is backing some kind of social justice position that I personally disagree with'? What use is that as a phrase? Just get on to what you actually disagree with rather than just throwing a meaningless label on things.
And there's no reason to take a 'side' between either article. I think the original article didn't make the point well and did come across a bit whiny, but I think Correia came off at least as bad. If I'd call anyone a bully from the two articles (let along the linked one about diversity in science fiction casts) it would be Correia.
I'm more inclined to think negatively of people who want to throw the social justice warrior label on someone because apparently that improves their own point somehow. Yeah, lets call people names and at the same time imply that 'social justice' is somehow a bad thing. That's a worthwhile contribution to debate!
I think the original article isn't put terribly helpfully, and I think the Correia article is a pretty poor thing as well. Having confronted some people several times is no excuse for doing so in the aggressive and dismissive manner he does.
I think one could equally say 'stop jumping to take offence every time somebody tries to talk about how privilege and racism are real things in society'. That doesn't mean that everybody talking about such things does so in a reasonable way, but some people being unreasonable isn't some kind of pass for other people being unreasonable in turn.
Personally i have little time for any argument that needs to hang itself on putting people into buckets. "Oh, all you social justice warriors are just the same!" "You're a voice for the patriarchy and part of the problem!"
Neither are terribly helpful. It just gets people wanting to hop onto whichever 'side' they agree with rather than actually listen to what a particular person is saying.
GOG unfortunately doesn't have any of the Gold Box games yet, though they have most things from Baldur's Gate on. When I play any of the games I do so with an Amiga emulator (though I still have my old boxes up on the shelf at home :D ), since that's what I was used to. Plus it generally has better sound than the PC releases of the time. I'm on a Mac now, but winUAE was a pretty solid Amiga emulator, plus Amiga Forever gives some help getting one going.
Personally I hope that D&D beats Pathfinder for several quarters at least, as (provided the sales aren't all people abandoning ship from Pathfinder to D&D) that will give a strong signal that the RPG market is in a strong place. I'm having a lot of fun playing Pathfinder and have always enjoyed Paizo's setting material and APs, but I've never been especially wedded to any one system and think that growing the overall market is a good thing longer term.
Don't get me wrong, I still really like Paizo as a company and by no means want their sales to drop off very much. But if D&D Next is a hit then it has potential to bring new people into the hobby or bring old players back, some of whom will inevitably move onto Pathfinder or other systems.
Oh, and I loved the Gold Box games! Played Champions of Krynn in particular so many times... Me and a friend were so addicted to it that I remember once talking on the phone for ages as we were each racing to finish it first on our Amiga's! I vote that Obsidian make a Pathfinder game similar to those games on the tablet too. :D
If you don't like Forgotten Realms a better introduction to the infinity engine would be Icewind Dale of Planescape: Torment. Icewind Dale is in the Realms, but that isn't too important since it's a much more straightforward dungeon crawler at heart than Baldur's Gate. And Planescape: Torment of course has a great story and is in Planescape!
How exactly is this handing over power to the commissioner? He's given the punishment that he's entitled to from his position, plus the owners are going to vote on a further punishment that he's suggested. So he's used exactly the power allocated to him and the owners are going to vote on further punishment that the commissioner doesn't have the power to impose on his own. As far as I can see that's working exactly as intended. Commissioner doles out a 'smaller' punishment, owners as a whole get to decide if a larger punishment should be enforced too.
Certainly there are other issues besides racism, but it certainly is about Sterling's racism as well. If he hadn't been recorded making racist statements then this wouldn't have happened. There are certainly issues to be ironed out over how the recording was obtained and over exactly what the appropriate punishment may be, but it's the fact that he's racist and that's significantly more in the public eye now is what's demanded some reaction from the NBA. You're perfectly entitled to think it's wrong to have gotten into the public eye this much, but it's in the public eye now and more people know what Sterling is like than did before this incident happened. And the NBA needs to deal with the implications of that.
Sorry to see you go Sean, but all the best for the next phase of your life and I look forward to hopefully still seeing your work in Paizo's various lines.
I pretty strongly disagree with the idea that Paizo staff should stay out of moderating threads in which they are conversing. For me it's one of the great features of the board that we get to interact with Paizo staff as people and not just in their capacity as Paizo staff members.
I don't even see how limiting the participation of Paizo staff would address the perceived 'problem' anyway. Paizo staff are going to have the same political views whether they're posting in a thread or merely moderating it. By trying to chase staff away from posting and into moderating from the shadows that will only make things worse. I trust the judgement of the Paizo staff to separate personal beliefs from their moderation. If they're ever unsure then certainly it makes sense to double-check with another staff member that their judgement is sound, but I'd be surprised if that doesn't sometimes happen already.
Certainly when I used to moderate forums being involved in a thread made me more cautious about moderating if anything, people could see I was involved so would automatically assume I did any deleting. But if something offensive is posted then it should be removed whether a moderator is participating or not.
And frankly I've participated in and read a number of the hot topic threads and have always found the moderation pretty even handed. There's a lot of confirmation basis going on where one 'side' will complain bitterly about posts being deleted, while missing posts getting deleted from the other 'side' are ignored.
I don't necessarily agree with calling out a specific moderator, but for my part I think Jessica Price is visible, but I don't get the feeling she actually moderates in a different way from most of the other staff. I think she's more inclined to get involved in sensitive subjects than other staff members during the actual discussion which seems to create that impression, but as I said I don't get the impression that she makes very different moderating choices from the staff in general.
For myself I think the moderators do a pretty good job and I disagree that there's much evident in the way of bias. Certainly there have been decisions that I have agreed with and decisions I have disagreed with, but I find them pretty consistent and when posts start getting deleted it's usually for predictable reasons and often from predictable posters.
In a situation like the first post I think keeping the message in question is always going to be a pretty tricky call. The phrase is pretty offensive, but that's entirely the point, the poster is saying that he's glad that kind of offensive comment is indeed considered offensive. There's no suggestion of the phrase being applied as an insult to anyone in the thread, it's an example of the kind of thing that one would hope most everyone could agree shouldn't happen. It's a judgement call and I'm not certain which way I'd have gone if I was making that decision, but I think it's a grey line and not really something I could put down to bias.
