Callum Finlayson's page

I don't know the AP in question, but just to (belatedly) expand on blahpers' response...

As there's a variant of skip between that specifically allows taking a victim along (snatch between, which only Kimenhul (AFAIK) have) I also wouldn't expect this to be possible with the normal skip between.

However, I'd certainly suggest that it seems (to me) reasonable to give Qoloks snatch between, but only for victims they've swallowed

So, Tonya's in WA at the end of May, Brum the start of June, Ohio in mid June, back to Brum for late July, then Indy in early August -- spot the person who's got gold status on their air miles :)

This includes the demigods of other fiends (asura ranas, kyton demagogues, oni daimo, qlippoth lords, rakshasa immortals, and sahkil tormentors), who all get some more description and flavor ... here's a look at the table of sahkil tormentors found in Book of the Damned ...

:D Excellent!

Hmmm... it occurs to me that in order to be in keeping with the theme of the book you really should have tormented subscribers by releasing it to retail first and only sending it out to subs once us lesser mortals have got our hands on it! :)

-Always have a ysoki on-board; rub their head for luck before the jump.

Ysoki with bald spots & shiny pates will be regarded as luckier since their head-rubbing has clearly warded off starship-eating giant space hamsters on a greater number of jumps.

Perhaps it's also important that everyone on-board (not just the pilot) rubs the ysoki, there'll be a group ysoki-rubbing session so everyone knows everyone else has rubbed the ysoki. This would be one of the reasons why finding a stowaway is so bad -- he hasn't rubbed an Ysoki so the crew have to rush to throw him out of an airlock to avert the inevitable doom! Wise stowaways know to bring their own ysoki with them to avoid this problem if discovered.

Perhaps if you don't have an ysoki on board you can buy synthetic ysoki fur, which the dealer assures you is just as effective as the real thing -- but will anyone be willing to travel on a ship that dosn't have an ysoki? Black marketeers will sell ysoki scalps, which are almost certainly at least as effective as synthetic ysoki fur, and probably just as good as a live ysoki.

In WH40k the thing that stops any FTL travel turning into the Event Horizon movie is a device called a Gellar Field, which basically stops the residents of the Abyss from breaking into your ship while you whizz through the cosmos -- even if that threat wasn't real, as long as you believe it's real and that the device in question prevents it from happening, you'd never fly without it.

"... and the blue button prevents Socothbenoth being summoned when you engage the drift engine; you should probably remember to press the blue button ..."

Triune was an obvious one but also, Pharasma.

And Besmara.

Let's say your average starship is about five times as long as it is tall and wide... A jet airliner has ...

Keep in mind that a cylindrical shape matters far less outside an atmosphere, unless you need to worry about aerodynamics or presenting a small cross-section (stealth and/or combat) a sphere's far better.

I've seen similar discussions on the "Atomic Rockets" web site.

They propose using a design more akin to a nuclear submarine than air craft for determining 'ship density'. Since a submarine has to withstand greater and repeated pressure variances.

Yes, I understand a star ship is invariably only experianceing an atmorpheric difference of about one atmosphere to nill and back per trip... but still, you'd want serious redundancy in something that might pop a leak half way between places in the middle of nothing.

Yep, in many regards underwater engineering is a lot harder than space systems engineering -- and that's one of the main reasons. The pressure goes up *very* quickly as you get deeper underwater. The direction of the pressure's easier to work with underwater than in space, but the magnitude's the killer.

If you're looking at starting at 15th level then that's Scuttlecove + jaunting round the planes -- so normally the party would be looking for Lavinia and wondering what's going on with all these Shadow Pearls.

The easiest way to get yourself up to speed is probably to read the various Savage Tidings articles + the adventure introductions & synponses at the start of each chapter. Plus read the threads on here about some of the problems with some of the later parts of the story.

That should be enough for you to cobble together a coherent background & motivation for the party -- I'd probably suggest starting in media res with the party hearing that some trusted ally (a replacement for Lavinia) has vanished in Scuttlecove while investigating the Shadow Pearls.

Maybe have a small introductory adventure in which the Lavinia-replacement asks the party to recover one of these mysterious pearls while she goes on ahead to Scuttlecove on the trail of the others. Perhaps have it that the Lavinia-replacement has done levels 1-14 of STAP and has now called in help when she realises she's out of her depth.

The last few chapters have, IIRC, a few call-backs to earlier chapters but none that are too essential so long as the party realises that the Shadow Pearls aren't merely dodgy magical items, that this is *BAD* and needs stopping ASAP -- give them a little motivation, and so long as they're your bog standard Big Damn Heroes that's enough for them to charge headlong into the lower planes!

Given how I'm in "Wait until it is clear what they will do with the current EU canon" holding mode with Star Wars, anyway, it is hard for me to get worked up over the whole deal.

Personally, I hope they build a big bonfire and throw 90% of the post-Endor EU on it.

I suspect I'm in the minority, but I also suspect I'm right -- Disney won't want to be constrained by the EU and are probably under no obligation to retain most aspects of it they don't like.

I would have made Planescape.

EDIT: To clarify, i don't particularly care about money.

You might not personally, but how many people do you employ, and how many shareholders have given you their money? That's why companies (including Disney and EA) operate the way they do -- they're complex organisations with many (sometimes conflicting) interests and dependants.

I don't think there's a particularly clear winner, different groups favour different styles. That said the ones that tend to get the most popular acclaim seem to be RotRL, CotCT, KM, and CC.

On the flip side, SD seems to have few supporters, and support for the rest is mixed -- any one AP will likely be loved by some, loathed by others , and considered okay by most.

Or adapt some of the 3.5 ones -- IMO both Age of Worms and Savage Tide have some of the strongest elements of any AP.

Become *more* deadly!? :)

The first adventure & the first level in general have always been pretty lethal -- the mad scramble to buy all the CLW you can lay your hands on if you survive the first adventure was always (and, in my experience, still is) commonplace.

Danger's fun, and having a backpack stuffed with tricks & trinkets to help you stay alive just encourages nefarious GMs & scenario writers to come up with even sneakier ways of killing you! :)

I'd start by considering what you want the time travel to achieve - is it travel into the future or the past? Is it just so the PCs can explore a historical/future setting, or so that they can alter past events? If the latter then you need to decide if/how you want these changes to effect the present and how to resolve any paradoxes that are created.

You may also wish to give some consideration to how you want timetravel to work - if they're only going forward in time then there's very little problem, all the trouble starts when they travel backwards in time. I'd strongly advocate that any travel back through time immediately and irrevocably results in the universe(multiverse) forking into two branches at the point in time they travel back to, and any changes occur in the new branch - if they then travel back to the future, even if it's just returning to their original time, then that occurs in the new branch. They've left their original branch forever, they no longer exist there (from the point in time at which they left), and whatever changes they make in the past (in the new branch) have no effect on the original branch.

I included a tiny bit of time travel in my version of Age of Worms (specifically reworking the "flashback" scene in the Library of Last Resort), and it was *very* tricky to make work. Running a whole campaign, and ensuring things stay consistent & logical, would (IMO) be a nightmare.

Edition...
I can't really settle on one edition, as I find strengths and weaknesses in each of D&D (esp as the Compendium rules), 1e, 2e, and 3/3.5e.
I'd not also that (IMO) the changes in how the fluff/settings evolved during each edition may make it tricky to objectively consider each edition in its own right.

Modules...
I'll skip over some of the obvious ones in favour of a few gems that might be less familiar to some:
B10 - Nights Dark Terror
X2 - Castle Amber
RA1 - Feast of Goblyns
Dead Gods

Plus IMO some of the best adventures were publshed in Dungeon rather than released as modules, including the APs.

I'd love to see some maps similar to Eric Anondson's outrageously gorgeous Greyhawk ones.

Isn't the requirement that members of the Darklight Sisterhood change their surname to "Darklight" a bit, for wont of a better term, silly?

Why would they do that? Isn't it going to be a bit obvious, even if the group is semi-secret? Even if most people never encounter more than one or two, some will look through the Pathfinder Chronicles back catalogue and notice a Chelaxian dystaff-dynasty that dosn't appear to line up with any actual Chelaxian family. A few people in-the-know make this discovery and the knowledge filters out -- why would a mid-level Andoren Pathfinder not warn all his fellows that any girl with the surname Darklight is likely a Chelaxian agent?

Why not go for something more discrete? A funny handshake, a reference to a particular uncle or cousin ("I believe your father knows my Uncle Jeremiah"), a comment about a shared experience ("did you holiday on the shores of lake Tamala as a child?"), even use of a restricted/skewed lexicon (eg U versus non-U expressions); any would not only be more discrete, but also a more reliable casual identifier in public situations (with stricter ways of verifying identity when in private).

... realistically.

I think I know where you're going wrong :)

I don't have LB1 to hand, and it's a while since I looked at it, so can't comment on the module itself, but in general accurate medieval demographics don't make for a fun D&D-style game.

A medium sized village like Piren's Bluff would only have 1 or 2 "professional" guards or watchmen, relying on raising a militia (posse comitatus) in time of need (which would effectively be most adult men in the settlement).

All able-bodied adult men would be expected to contribute to the defence if required, and in many european countries such was (effectively) the law. In England the "Assize of Arms" act in C13 required pretty much everyone to be trained and armed (at least with bows -- bizarrely in the middle ages even the poorest farmers could afford 75gp longbows and lived in 1000gp homes! :) This requirement that the general citizenry was well armed and trained was significantly stricter than in the rest of Europe, and contributed greatly to the stability of the country and the quality/behaviour of the ruling classes -- a few noteworthy exceptions generally proved the risk to the government of requiring such a well trained militia :) -- while at the same time contributing significantly to our ability to beat up various other nations we had grievances with.

Cheliax would likely, given its nature, shy away from depending on (or even permitting) a significant citizen militia, so would have to rely more on professional soldiers to enforce the law and defend settlements.

I'd assume that the 90 guards are separate from the 200 townsfolk, and that the +110=200 comes from a potential militia of able bodied citizens. The 90 guards would be part of the castle garrison, which probably needs accounting for separately.

Assuming that the main PB population of 200 is more-or-less self-sufficient (probably a fairly big assumption) then the 100-or-so "unproductive" people in the castle/garrison would need about 500-1000 people (mostly farmers) to support them, probably more.

Roughly speaking about 95% of medieval populations lived in settlements of less than 500, and these were generally self-sufficient and almost entirely farming-dominated. Non-self-sufficient communities, especially such "unproductive" places as castles and cities, will be surrounded by farms and small villages with a total population of 5-10x the main settlement.

Even allowing for a bit of clerical magic (create food & water, plant growth) you still need a lot of farmers within ~1 day's travel to support even a relatively small town or contingent of professional soldiers.

D&D tends to work better if you ignore realistic demographics, economics, etc :)