BobTheCoward's page

This feels a little like Worf Effect. The one match we get with the god of war and he dies.

Cthonian is the new name for Abyssal, since the word itself means precisely that: "Of or relating to the underworld," and the Outer Rifts are a full-on supernatural underworld.

Aklo is public domain (having been invented over a hundred years ago by writer Arthur Machen in his short story "The White People").

And Sakvroth has been a Darklands language since the start; we're now transitioning to it as a name we own rather than one we borrowed.

In Warhammer 40k there is a famous planet called Cthonia where people live underground and thanks to you James I learned a nugget of trivia for that game

If we could send the Pathfinder 2e rules and setting back in time (not the books themselves, but the texts) how far back do you think it could go and people would still like it?

Do you think there is a point in time in RPG history where it would be near universally disliked because the world wasn't ready for the kind of play? Or do you think it could play in any era?

If you build something off of decades experience, and transport a work back to before that experience, do you think an audience can still understand the art?

What are the odds a mortal soul on Golarion is going to make it to being judged? Are daemons, hags, and everything else picking off more than 1% of souls or is it a fraction of a fraction?

Do demons like succubi care if they use their powers versus their words? For example, does a succubi care if they use suggestion to make a human act?

What about sahkils and their magical abilities to make humans experience negative emotions? They like making humans feel a certain way, but are they actually affecting souls through magical compulsion?

It seems that a lawful good dwarf with vengeful hatred is not actually being put forward by the work as good.

BobTheCoward wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Why can't we have Good racists?

Why can't we have Good homophobes?

Why can't we have Good slavers?

Why can't we have Good torturers?

Why can't we have Good rapists?

Because when you have the big G on someone who partakes in any of those horrible things in a game where objective morality is a thing you're saying they're good, they're okay, or they're so minimally bad they're okay.

Bigotry isn't good and there should be no desire to portray it as such. "Oh it's a game" is a deflection that's attempting to shut down a conversation, you're absolutely failing in trying to defend the issue when that is brought up. It doesn't make the bigotry go away, or okay.

"Oh it's okay cause they're fictional humanoids that aren't humans"
"Oh it's okay cause their skin color is different"
"Oh it's okay cause this one group of them is bad so they're all bad."
"Oh it's okay cause this other author said they were bad."

The above are all attempts used in the real world, have been used, to justify bigotry.

Drow, Goblins, and Orcs aren't unthinking monsters in P2 so trying to use any of the above to justify in-game bigotry at them is you falling in to espousing bigotry, a rather glaring dog whistle, pushing for "safe" and "accepted" bigotry.

But the objective good morality of the game setting doesn't have to align with my morality.

The objective morality of this game world is not actually good in real life? So? I'm already roleplaying a setting with objective morality when I bet many of us do not think objective morality exists. What does the contours of that fake objective morality matter?

Again, this is pretty much a Thermian Argument, I'm going to suggest watching a Folding Ideas video to illuminate why people would have a problem with this line of reasoning:

Ascalaphus wrote:

for convenience

I promise it isn't very long

Let me rephrase. This is occuring in the context of a story with objective morality. We have evidence that some of the creators do not ascribe to an objective morality (and some of the audience, I would bet quite a few here). At some point, people here are leveling the criticism that even though the work exists in a world of relative morality, the rules of the fictional objective morality can be perceived as the work taking a stance that they are good. How does the work convey that it is good in the relative morality context?

(as an aside, I also have no problem with a work advocating a position I disagree with and roleplaying in it)

Why can't we have Good racists?

Why can't we have Good homophobes?

Why can't we have Good slavers?

Why can't we have Good torturers?

Why can't we have Good rapists?

Because when you have the big G on someone who partakes in any of those horrible things in a game where objective morality is a thing you're saying they're good, they're okay, or they're so minimally bad they're okay.

Bigotry isn't good and there should be no desire to portray it as such. "Oh it's a game" is a deflection that's attempting to shut down a conversation, you're absolutely failing in trying to defend the issue when that is brought up. It doesn't make the bigotry go away, or okay.

"Oh it's okay cause they're fictional humanoids that aren't humans"
"Oh it's okay cause their skin color is different"
"Oh it's okay cause this one group of them is bad so they're all bad."
"Oh it's okay cause this other author said they were bad."

The above are all attempts used in the real world, have been used, to justify bigotry.

Drow, Goblins, and Orcs aren't unthinking monsters in P2 so trying to use any of the above to justify in-game bigotry at them is you falling in to espousing bigotry, a rather glaring dog whistle, pushing for "safe" and "accepted" bigotry.

But the objective good morality of the game setting doesn't have to align with my morality.

The objective morality of this game world is not actually good in real life? So? I'm already roleplaying a setting with objective morality when I bet many of us do not think objective morality exists. What does the contours of that fake objective morality matter?

How would a group befriend the caligni when they have to take the lens from the cult prophet in the Gug?

The book map has colored borders for the districts
Does this map contain anything similar?

Have you ever gone through phases where you do extreme rule variations ("no dice, everything is narrative"....or, "we will be tracking calories burned and consumed"...tongue in cheek examples, of course)?

Is this the map size in the book that was initially planned? I wasn't sure if it was going to be like the one that shipped with the new world guide, or like the old giant inner sea map.

Do the magical runes around a hand when a spell is cast function like normal light? Can you see it from as far away as you could see a candle, for example?

BobTheCoward wrote:

In your latest adventure, I found the caul evocative of late 19th/early 20th century occultism's perception of ectoplasm. Was this your intent?

If so, did you have any concerns about how it would play with a modern audience? Ectoplasm seems to have fallen out of modern storytelling (could be my bad perception, though).

100% my intent, and pretty much the cue we've taken for ectoplasm for all of our books, more or less.

I don't have any concerns about it at all. Ectoplasm does still show up in movies and stories today. It's not in every single horror movie, but it never went away. And furthermore, bringing in possibly obscure real-world occult/myth stuff into the game is something we've been doing a lot from the start.

AKA: Lamashtu's pretty obscure these days, and I had no fears about how she'd play to a modern audience. And since we've featured her as one of our main evil deities, I've seen her show up as a villain in a movie. An unfortunately kind of mediocre one whose title I can't remember off the top of my head, but still.

Is your interest in ectoplasm about it's place in fiction, historical occultism, or both?

In your latest adventure, I found the caul evocative of late 19th/early 20th century occultism's perception of ectoplasm. Was this your intent?

If so, did you have any concerns about how it would play with a modern audience? Ectoplasm seems to have fallen out of modern storytelling (could be my bad perception, though).

BobTheCoward wrote:

Without getting into what the in-setting explanation for the death of Aroden is...

What is it like when you tell it to new team members?

Do you tell them? Does it get a reaction? Do people wait to ask or do they ask right away?

I sometimes tell fellow employees my theory, yeah, but not always. I generally wait until they ask. It does get a reaction.

Who asked the soonest after showing up?

How long did it take Luis Loza? (I listen to him on know direction)

Without getting into what the in-setting explanation for the death of Aroden is...

What is it like when you tell it to new team members?

Do you tell them? Does it get a reaction? Do people wait to ask or do they ask right away?

It seems you like to use both the Dominion of the black and outer gods in different stories. I'm not familiar with a lot of the inspiration of these respective groups. Do you have any recommendations on choosing one over the other for an adventure and giving them a distinct voice beyond "they come from the dark tapestry."

Ed Reppert wrote:

Where is Slab Hill in relation to the Fogfen? It appears from the map of Otari in "Ruins of Gauntlight" that there's no trail leading to it.

I created the map of Otari and its surrounding regions and wrote the gazetteer for Otari, and the expectation was that the other authors would expand on that for their content, since I wrote the gazetteer for Otari months ahead of time so that ALL of the authors would be able to use it.

I don't know what Slab Hill is.

I'm guessing Slab HIll showed up in one of the things I didn't write, and whowever wrote it forgot to contextualize it is all. It certainly doesn't appear in the Otari article I turned over to development.

Feel free to assume that the trail to Slab Hill starts just off the map somewhere, I guess.

And this is also a good reminder that if you DO ask about a location in the world, please contextualize what book that thing appeared in if it's something brand new or obscure, because I don't read everything we publish.

I didn't realize you did that much work on Otari.

At this point, you must have worked on multiple small towns where heroes start their adventuring careers. How do you get inspiration to find unique things to add to these towns?

Moving the April and May products together will prevent the PDFs from going up for sale tomorrow and shifts the release date to May's release date (May 26th).

Items produced overseas all come to the Paizo warehouse (via shipping containers through our local port), they arrive at our warehouse where our staff checks them in. Shortly before we ship out subscriber copies, our warehouse is busy shipping orders for our distributors. Those distributors then receive products and ship them out to the stores that purchase from them.

Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding this. It looks like there are no new products on this list? Is it unknown what the new products will be?

Is there an Inner Sea nation that the team has tried really hard to set APs or modules around, but can't find the right story for it? This is a separate from nations that haven't had an AP yet because there isn't a lot of interest around it.

Fun thread! :-)

For what it's worth, I've had a few sequal ideas in my head for several Adventure Paths I've worked on in the past. The runelords trilogy is the only one that made it to print so far, but Iron Gods, Jade Regent, and Second Darkness are three in particular I've been noodling over for some time. Iron Gods specifically—if I had to pick one adventure path to do a sequel to and no other, it'd be the plot I've been tinkering with for the Iron Gods sequel.

There's certainly a few elements in Iron Gods that I specifically built in to support this sequel, in any event... story elements, plot developments, and themes that point to the potential new plot. I'm hesitant to do more than tease that at this point though, but yeah. "Iron Gods 2" would be the one I went with at this point.

Is it still a Numeria story or is it something different?

Lord Fyre wrote:

Do you follow D&D 5E at all?

I haven't played 5E for ages, but I am following it from a professional curiosity angle and from a "many of my friends work on it" angle.

Do you think 5E would benefit from a Paizo release tempo?

PO1977 wrote:

Very interesting, thanks. One thing I wonder still, the aforementioned ability to grant spells, is it automatically available to any divinity or is it something one such being must pursue?

Deep questions for a Friday afternoon.

It's automatic. The only thing that really is a requirement for a divinity is that they can grant spells. Everything else that can't isn't. There's no such thing as a non-divinity that can grant spells, and no such thing as a divinity that can't grant spells.

Doesn't mean you can't worship a non-divinity, but it does mean if you worship a non-divinity, you can't be a cleric. Your path to casting divine spells in that case is better represented by taking levels in a divine sorcerer or an oracle or a divine witch.

I may be a little thick...

What does a witch's patron or an oracle mystery do? What is the word that describes these that isn't "granting?"

Brissan wrote:

Does Malevolence contain any sanity rules or other subsystems?

It does not contain a sanity system, no. That's not really appropriate for Pathfinder.

It does introduce an expansion to the research rules presented in the Gamemastery Guide that works for investigating a haunted location via dreams (and while not directly supported, could EASILY be adjusted to research via visions or seances or the like). It also includes a new version of the phantasm haunt we first started exploring in the hardcover version of Curse of the Crimson Throne, and also introduces a new condition, "haunted", to the rules. This condition is pretty much only usable in the context of the adventure, but it can absolutely be used in other adventures that feature lots of haunted stuff.

Will it employ some sort of very high level hunter like in Hangman's Noose or Crucible of Chaos?

What do you think of that element in horror adventures?

I could preorder the battle cards (I don't have an accessories subscription). It looks like beginner box cannot be pre-ordered right now. Is that correct?

During first edition's run did you consider having an NPC pass the test of the starstone?

William Ronald wrote:

So, will there be anything (at least hints) of areas further to the south in Garund such as Droon and Holomog?

Not much. They'll be mentioned maybe, but remember... this is a book about the Mwangi Expanse, NOT about all of Garund.

I keep making that mistake! But I also forget about how big the Mwangi expanse is.

How many avistani nations can you fit into the Mwangi expanse?

The extinction curse pawn collection was shipped to me. Is this a different set of pawns?

Rysky wrote:

Are you excited about the Magaambya AP being announced?

No, because I've known this book was in the works for well over a year.

It's not so much "excitement" at it being announced as it is relief that we can now actually talk about it and don't have to play coy about it. It's pretty frustrating to have to sit quietly and say nothing as month after month goes by with people complaining about us not doing things when, in fact, we've been doing those things behind the scenes longer than they've been complaining about them not being done, if that makes sense.

Also relieved that we were able to keep it secret long enough to make the announcement in the right way, rather than have it leak and have the internet immediately start assuming the worst.

That means in a relatively short time you got to see two continent maps put together (Mwangi and Vudra) along with a full world map. How did that feel?

Question in encounter design using broken promises as a specific example....

I keep imagining first round the wizard trying cataclysm and then the final opponent uses redirect energy reaction...

Are 2e end boss fights designed for the players to easily survive that scenario to communicate that this is the ability? or is 2e design meant to seriously encourage researching this pre-battle?

A lot of recent video games use death on boss fights to communicate information. How do you like to communicate that information in RPGs?

BobTheCoward wrote:

If we are doing the good cops dismissed trope, we could also do technician snuggles gear out to framed cops trope.

Absolutely. That works fine.

The issue is that, at that point, they have no incentive not to use their personal money or gear as well, which makes your suggestion of 'they get paid and paid well, but we never have to deal with it' not really work.

Which means we need to know how much they are paid, and we're right back at 'high level people should be paid as such or the world makes no sense'.

If you have their pay already be how they get level appropriate gear, which they then own, this is no problem at all. If all their gear is requisitioned, however, you're left with three possibilities:

#1. Your players discover you were lying to them about them being paid well. Most players will be upset that you, the GM, lied to them, the players, about something that their characters could have easily known. It's much like not telling the players about a door their characters can see.

#2. They suddenly need to swap all their requisitioned equipment for their personal stuff. This works, but just seems like an unnecessary step.

#3. They manage to keep their requisitioned gear and go grab their personal gear. They now have roughly double expected WBL in gear. This is an issue.

Possibility 4, no one cares.

If we are doing the good cops dismissed trope, we could also do technician snuggles gear out to framed cops trope.

BobTheCoward wrote:

Since it is probably the shortest campaign in AP history, you could just say, "you get paid aligned with your performance, but are not permitted to bring your own gear" and never say how much it is.

There are some notable issues with that in Books 5 and 6 given that the PCs wind up on the outs with the force (as in, fired and disgraced). At that point, there's no motivation not to use 'their own equipment' and you need to figure out what they have.

So, I mean, you could have them entirely switch out gear for equally valuable gear at that point, but I'm not really seeing the benefit.

Haven't read them yet.

BobTheCoward wrote:

Both of these involve the player owning the equipment. Automatic bonus progression reduces the need to own gear.

That's correct.

BobTheCoward wrote:

I like the idea of a budget and requisition with no ownership....and just a cruddy salary.

You can certainly do this if it fits the specific themes you're aiming for.

But it honestly stops making a lot of sense past the lowest levels. A 10th level character can make ludicrous amounts of money in the private sector, and I do mean ludicrous. Not paying them commensurately with their capabilities would result in no longer having high level people working for you, and Absalom (being the sort of city it is) needs to retain such personnel rather desperately. High level people are well nigh irreplaceable assets, and are generally valued accordingly.

Now, having some gear be requisitioned rather than owned makes a lot of sense (I'd give them some sort of consumables budget for precisely this reason), but not making money beyond a cruddy salary doesn't make a lot of sense for people with the kind of inherent power of high level characters.

And players will often respond by leaving the Edgewatch and finding someone who will actually pay them what they're worth, just as real people would. They're used to the idea that high level characters have lots of money (mostly invested in good equipment that they personally own), and will see plenty of evidence that this remains true outside the Edgewatch. Even if they're invested in the main plotline, many will simply quit and explore said plotline on their own, either finding a patron to support them or resorting to looting fallen foes like most PCs.

Since it is probably the shortest campaign in AP history, you could just say, "you get paid aligned with your performance, but are not permitted to bring your own gear" and never say how much it is.

Also, the idea of godlike mortals serving police for paltry pay isn't an unheard of trope.....that is like the show "Bones."

Bit of a joke....wanted to get in a dig at Bones.

#2: Give the PCs a salary based on the WBL tables. This is really pretty doable.

#3: Give the PCs rewards/bounties from the Edgewatch for accomplishing specific jobs. This is the most 'traditional' option, and should work fine.

Both of these involve the player owning the equipment. Automatic bonus progression reduces the need to own gear.

I like the idea of a budget and requisition with no ownership....and just a cruddy salary.

Is the art style for Absalom in Agents of Edgewatch (strong Victorian/post Victorian elements) the finalized style guide for Absalom or able to change for future adventures? For example, could the same are look more Renaissance or medieval in art to support a different theme?

Paizoxmi wrote:

Did you put the dinosaurs and related creatures in the adventure path extinction curse?

I know how much you like them.

I didn't. That would have been Ron. I'm not the only one at Paizo who likes dinosaurs.

That said, I DID associate the demon lord worshiped by the xulgath with dinosaurs, and set up other ties between them and dinosaurs in Deep Tolguth back in "Into the Darklands," so if Ron was just following up on those things that I did years ago, then maybe I did in a way.

Who made the connection between aeon orbs and the light of the black desert? And to use that location?

I love the Vudra section in this book's toolbox! Nice to see a different area of the world covered.

For GM's looking ahead, the players don't travel to Vudra, but they fight cultists from Vudra, who live in "Vudratown" an area in Absalom's Foreign Quarter.

You saved me a post where I just typed out Vudra repeatedly in all caps.

BobTheCoward wrote:

Hello,

I was looking at creature heights this week. How did the decision to make rune giants 40 feet, nearly twice the height of a storm giants, come about? It is very tall and I think really makes book six feel unique.

How do you visualize fights between warriors and extremely tall monsters? As a GM, do you call attention to it and require players to describe how they reach, or do you handle it?

At the time we created rune giants, there were no giants that big in the game, so making them giants even compared to other giants was important. At 40 feet, they're twice as tall as storm giants.

One of the themes of Runelords was that each of the 6 adventures had an increasing size for it's theme monsters... goblins to ghouls to ogres to stone giants to rune giants (book 5 kinda breaks the theme a little unless you count the Karzoug stone golem I guess).

For fights between Medium/Small creatures and larger creatures, I absolutely involve the size difference in the flavor of the fight, but don't require players to do the same.

[For reference] a human fighting a rune giant would be equivalent to a Barbie/old GI Joe fighting a human.

Hello,

I was looking at creature heights this week. How did the decision to make rune giants 40 feet, nearly twice the height of a storm giants, come about? It is very tall and I think really makes book six feel unique.

How do you visualize fights between warriors and extremely tall monsters? As a GM, do you call attention to it and require players to describe how they reach, or do you handle it?

I keep looking, but I still can't figure out how treasure is supposed to work in this book. I see a couple references to fines, and getting treasure from a senseless monster. Is there a mechanic around looting I'm missing?

It feels like it could also work to put the old man in charge of the circus and the PCs be members, but not making decisions.

I never realized it was so tall (the wiki made it clear the altitude was from the old Absalom book).

Volume six provides some info about Arazlant Mox. This mountain is almost twice as tall as mount Rainier, and it is closer to Absalom than mount Rainier is to Seattle. Plus there are two other peaks taller than mount Rainier nearby.

I can't even fathom. I lived in the Seattle area for a bit and when it is clear, you can't miss it. I would love to see the view from Absalom.

Pharasma can be inscrutable sometimes, but is there a reason she still sends souls to Abaddon even though they are always stealing from the river of souls?

It looks like the first three APs have the same level breakdown per adventure.
1-4, 5-8, 9-11, 12-14, 15-17, 18-20

Do you know if the split APs will follow that pattern and that the first volume of the second half will start at level 12?

Dragnmoon wrote:

BobTheCoward wrote:

Dragnmoon wrote:

Damn, My May and June orders where combined. That is the most I think I have paid in one shipment that did not include Minis.

My last delivery for my subscriptions was February. I'm still 9 business days before they get to my email about this. I'm really curious what the package is going to look like.

Each account lists what subscription they have, you can see an example of that below my forum name where it shows my many subscriptions.

Yours shows none, that is most likely why you have not gotten any since Feb.

There is a relatively recent glitch where the forum tags don’t line up with the account’s subscriptions. I’ve seen several posters whose “my subscriptions” page shows an active sub (so they can’t add it themselves) but they have no forum tags.

I sent an email on May 11th already. So I'm on track to get it resolved around the 18th this month. We shall see.

The setting is high fantasy with god legends influenced by historical mythology. In that setting, that is what passes for lawful good. A character would grow up in that world.

Conan isn't going to sit down and say, "you know, I think there are serious issues with stories about Crom unless we consider developments in string theory."

Damn, My May and June orders where combined. That is the most I think I have paid in one shipment that did not include Minis.

My last delivery for my subscriptions was February. I'm still 9 business days before they get to my email about this. I'm really curious what the package is going to look like.

Darn. I don't think I realized people were still getting things shipped out. I haven't had a subscription fulfilled since February.