BobTheCoward's page

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?

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

Hello,

I just started subscriptions recently (Feb 25, 17248178, 4 subscription starting with extinction curse 2), and added pawn subscription 3/8 (7827205). Age of ashes is in the sidecart, and extinction curse 3 isn't listed anywhere. Is there something I need to do?

I would bet this is BS...

The GM has no problem rolling with the story, putting a villain in charge, giving a whole community lycanthropy, but is getting hung up on where they are in a jungle?

James Jacobs said in his thread that the cornucopias are retconned out. That is an interesting choice.

Blissful Lightning wrote:

Its mechanics might end up different in the new edition, but the flavor of "mythic power" should still exist in 2E, at least as a quality Runelord Alderpash notably lacked but Xanderghul and Sorshen possessed, right?

We won't need to make those decisions until we stat one of them up, but at least as far as NPCS go, they can still be up to level 30 in power.

If we are talking about high powered characters, I really liked the mythic iconic art. I always wanted to see one piece of art after an adventure path where iconics look like the corpse looters that players are. Like a last page ROTRL picture where Seoni is wearing the robes of xin shalast and Merisiel has the scribbler's +1 cold iron returning dagger.

Aricks wrote:

graystone wrote:

Bastress wrote:

That's extremely handy to know of if you're in a party that's complaining about you holding them back.

and it's really nice that you can pass that item around on a daily basis to make sure that the party isn't slowed down by someone when you're doing long treks through the wilderness, then hand it back to the superfast one when you expect a fight against whatever you're tracking.

Now the alchemist can keep up when carrying his basic gear! :P

This makes me laugh, and that's good because laughing helps me cover up the crying.

I say that because for an item only 7 levels higher (level 9) and 50 gp less (110 gp) you can have that same speed buff in the form of an elixir that only works once and only lasts an hour! Crafting costs being what they are that means that an alchemist would probably be better off picking up the craft magic item feat and cranking out wands than they would making alchemical items in their downtime.

Yet another example of alchemical awesomeness.

consumables are WAAAAAY overpriced in general.

when it costs like 5-6 consumables for a same level permanent item, it means that within a week of usage you are already ahead, let alone a month or two...

Consumables need to be at minimum halved in base cost to be even slightly worth it...

There is a much larger pool of possible consumers for an elixer than a wand, right? Now someone who is not arcane has to spend a feat and train a skill.

Hello,

Some of the freelancers and team members at Paizo may have had their most formative gaming years on products you have created. As a writer/developer, what new things have you learned from junior freelancers?

I was watching the Star Trek episode "paradise syndrome" today. That is the one where native Americans think Kirk is a god because he performed CPR. That led me to googling and finding out resuscitation research is only a couple hundred years old and CPR is from 1960.

Do people on Golarion know CPR?

At the end of book 4 of rise of the runelords, I took 30 minutes for a quick scene of the church of abadar, calistria, and the Lord mayor making the transfer of funds and church/government purchase of an army's worth of loot taken in jorgenfist.

How do you like to handle this aspect of higher level adventuring? Do you make it no big deal in the world? Say it happens off screen? Provide a justification?

As an aside, it feels like RPGs get less leeway on suspension of disbelief than other media.

BobTheCoward wrote:

It seems like they announced your book of the damned product the same week that you announced you wrapped primary development on it. Did the crimson throne and book of the damned development overlap or was it more like completing one then starting the other?

I didn't announce my finishing development until after it was announced, not the other way around.

Crimson Throne and Book of the Damned didn't overlap. Adventurer's Guide was in between them.

Curse of the crimson throne, adventurer's guide, book of the damned, and bestiary 6 all in a row? That is a hefty set of hardcovers.

This is cool! Now you just need to get it to give you a Google Maps style zoom-in from views like that to overhead views of the cities at sub-block resolution, and in the far future have the street view option . . . .

Wait a minute . . . do either of you happen to actually work for Google?

Speaking of which, that is something you can do in Google Earth right now. You can't really do a region map (too much stretching), but you can make image overlays of the city maps and scale them on there after loading the kmz files.

This thread is keeping my attention until more campaign setting line books are announced. Not as many campaign setting lovers as rule lovers out there.

BobTheCoward wrote:

I have been mulling over a question about strange aeons art in general then I saw your 1930s iconics in the blog post.

How do you approach art for a project like that? Flipping through them, the art is the the most "modern" looking dress and design of the golarian setting. How do you push the fantasy tradition while still maintaining the feel?

Hi Bob, I didn't work on any of the imagery for Strange Aeons. The "1930s" versions of the Iconics were beautifully rendered by a different artist. (Miguel Regodón Harkness)

Ugh. I can never read artist signatures.

For the rest of us without any skills, I cannot understate how great these look when loaded into Google Earth.

Erik Mona wrote:

Have you read the huge article I wrote about that stuff in Pathfinder #100?

I did, and while I liked it, it felt like I was looking through a knot hole in a fence.

I know more about how the Runelords effected Golarion than I do about what Aroden and his church created.

Just read that and it sounds harsh, I don't mean it that way. But Aroden actually wanted to advance Humanity and yet very little stands as a testament to his work. Yet the Runelords have dams and crumbling bridges and arcs that still stand.

It would seem to me that someone who stood for the advancement of humanity would stand as an example of what it could become and inspire humanity to do great works.

I don't see a whole lot of that. I used to think that it was sort of implied at the beginning of the campaign that was the case, but after reading more of the material I feel like I was mistaken and so that's on me.

So while I don't advocate for Aroden to return or his murder to be solved, I do think that for a god that influenced the world like he did I'd like to some evidence of it where it seems suitable.

Arch of aroden, the taldor expeditions, gallowspire, pushing a demon in a lake, and Absalom are all part of it. I was looking at River kingdom stuff and taldor/aroden influence is there.

And we can say, "Oh, but the Golarion cultures aren't carbon copies of the Earth cultures", and that's true, but the parallels are arguably too obvious (and deliberately employed) to just ignore them when they get inconvenient.

I just did. BOOM!

The average American sees 5 movies in the theater a year. Customers tend to be choosey about their options. All the business heuristics I know would lead to me betting that most their customers don't see bloat because they only purchase the few products that spark their interests.

The novel death's heretic somewhat addresses the role of inquisitors where clerics can be stripped of their powers by their god.

Stripping power is a brute force tool in a world of free will. Instead, clerics are given enough rope to hang themselves. Inquisitors are the rope.

Mr. Reynolds,

When designing elements in golarion before the age of lost omens, do you use any historical periods as a guide? How strongly do you adhere to these rules? For example, would a Taldan character from that peak of the empire resemble an iron age fighter rather than middle ages knight?

I think I have some different sort of advice.

Take a deep breath.

Pathfinder is 6 years old. You will notice the forum is not loaded with complaints about detect magic.

I would bet your players are not complaining and having fun. There is still that experience of discovery for them. They are meant to use detect magic a lot. Heck, the spell can be made permanent.

In a lot of ways, if there are no enemies in the room, the players are meant to discover the secrets in the room relatively easily. That really is the jumping off point of the story point. The width of walls will stop through-wall detection. I would recommend giving the impression that while not many people have detect magic, heroes do have detect magic and its use doesn't infuriate you.

The next question is why doesn't it matter if they use detect magic at will? There has been a lot of theory of RPGs since second edition. Discovering a hidden trap in a room doesn't work as well in RPGs as fiction. In fiction, it often serves as a tool to relate how clever the protagonist is or to say something about the character. In an RPG, players may not be able to figure out the "trick" (we as GMs like to think our puzzle is clever logic but it is often a trick), or it is so easy it invites mockery. Or, it involves artificially restricting their powers.

You should totally ask Wayne Reynolds thoughts on his sticky thread here. He thinks a lot about older era design and what they are like in collation.

Before I get started, I have a preamble from a different geek hobby. I respect comic books, but I'm not a fan. I can't embrace the timelessness of characters and constant lack of permanent death.

I always had the same issue with resting between dungeon attempts. It works for "old" dungeons but I have trouble making it exciting when it is the HQ of a villain engaged actively. To give an idea, I can do book 5 of hotel, but have trouble with tone in books 1 and 4.

I understand why it is in the blood of the hobby, but I can't do it justice.

How do you like to handle this when it comes up?

Other artists have made interior pieces with iconics you designed. Do you have a favorite piece or artist that have used these characters?

As the iconics move through the art of an adventure path, has there ever been discussion about "leveling" them up?

ok ok i understand all theses opinions but it still appear to me as a weird thing that devils and angels fight together against chaos

i obviously understand a lawful evil + lawful neutral and a lawful neutral + lawful good alliances but not a lawful evil + lawful neutral + lawful good one

and that any paladins whould be members of HELLsomething is very weird too

after all the lawful good and lawful neutral legions are no less organized than lawful evil ones...

and it's something to be a postman in a hellish nation and another thing to be the armed arm that apply the hellish orders of that nation above all when this armed arm is lawful good...

All the great lawyers are pit fiends.

There is also a fascination with punishment that I don't see in the city of Axis. They have inevitables, but law enforcement seems primarily with putting the system back on rails rather than extracting a sense of justice through punishing the rule breaker.

Axis is filled with axiomites and formians (ants!) who use hive minds and are practically incapable of violating order. Hell is explicit punishment of violators.

I have 3 great reasons for a second edition that pains me to not see mentioned a lot in these threads.

Stevens, Mona, Buhlman.

This company is composed of a talented team of artists. Rpgs, like any work of art, should have great works produced and not the works we think we want. If these three decided they have a great vision for a new edition or a new direction, I couldn't be more excited to see what they create.

Do the players always seem to find themselves in dungeons with challenges conveniently in range of their abilities? If so, it is only one more leap to a dungeon where it is convenient to rest.

If your dungeon is designed to be completed with or without resting, that should dictate monster reactions to resting. Building a dungeon that cannot be completed without resting, and then saying they cannot rest is pretty close to randomly dropping meteors on players.

I want to find ways to make religion more interesting in my game. While working on it, I keep coming back to Zyphus, the Grim Harvestmen. There are two components to his myth 1) souls that experience a meaningless death become his and do not pass through Pharasma in the Boneyard and 2) Cultists that arrange "accidental" deaths send those souls to Zyphus.

Would you play this is true or a complete fabrication? In my game, I'm leaning toward saying it is true. It does make for a setting where the fate of a soul is a lot less clear. It may be a little too dour, so I might say whenever Zyphus feels like looking in on the material plane.

Are some of these posts constructive? If not, are so many plain negative and snarky posts a good use of people's time in regards to a fun game where the choice of ranger or fighter probably won't affect a person's fun?

I joined the forum to only respond.

It seems that the easiest, but most obvious ploy is to hide McGuffins everywhere. Is there a way to make them no longer McGuffins, but integral to the story.

I took inspiration from Mission: Impossible and James Bond movies. often, these involve tracking down affiliates to the big villain. Sure, all of the agents could be in one city, but a global spanning operation needs agents everywhere.

Let's take the film Casino Royale. The Main villain is located in Europe, his big operation happens in Miami, he is handlin money for warlords in Africa.

Can we apply that to Pathfinder?

A Cheliax noble really wants to stick it to Osirion, create havoc for an operation to poison the water.

1) He needs a mercenary force...from the orc hordes.
2) He needs to move them...ships from the Shackles
3) This operation needs to move a lot of money discretely...a prophet from Druma
4) the final battle takes place in Osirion

Players, acting as agents, need to foil the plan by striking all the components. It concludes in Osirion where the operation is more limited, but still needs their effort to stop.

Here is another idea:

A temple emerges from the soil.

I haven't came up with the exact object, but it is something that has large benefits for whoever grabs it, but is exclusive to them and limited in influence. The point is that whole nations won't make efforts to grab it, nor do they benefit from a citizen possessing it. So, it is for small groups of adventurers only.

A sphinx and a guardian of the temple emerge. The gift is available to the first person to solve the riddle...

Players (maybe level 1), here of this mystery and must travel to wherever the temple is located. When they do, they hear the riddle...

"What did a king eat for brunch in the age of darkness?"

the secret answer: No one at this point knows, or what it is making reference to. However, there are beings on Golarion do know. It is a phrase in ancient aklo, and only by traveling to the Sightless Sea in Orv, and forcing out the answer from an ancient Aboleth king is the only way to gain the answer.

The Adventure: First, the players need to figure out they need to contact an Aboleth, the knowledgeable aboleths live only in the Darklands, and this concept of Orv. Once they figure that out, they need to prepare for the mission. How do they do that? It's player driven at that point. Acquiring the gear they feel they need is a globe spanning mission itself. Then, they have to travel 3 levels of the darklands to even get to the sightless sea.