Captain Marsh's page

Fantasy has always suffered a dangerous flirtation with the ugliest form of racism. The earliest voices of the genre – Tolkien, Lovecraft, and many others – lived in a time and place where ugly racial theories of supremacy and degeneracy were mainstream. We inherit imaginary worlds where dark-skinned people tend to be evil and malignant (drow, orcs, etc.) and light-skinned people tend to be good and virtuous.

For several decades now, the RPG world has worked to dismantle that part of our heritage, working toward new stories and new mythologies that are racially and culturally complex. I remember reading through the Eberron setting for the first time and thinking, cool, we’re finally getting there. Goblins were complex and often heroic. They had motivation, history. Orcs, too.

Now along comes Myfarog, an indie game produced by Varg Vikernes, a white supremacist from Norway who was convicted in the 1990s of murder and arson (he was found guilty of burning Christian churches).

In Myfarog, Vikernes doesn’t reject or downplay fantasy’s ugly history, nor does he distance himself from his own racist and violent past. Instead, he embraces those things. Indeed, he explicitly uses the racist elements hard-wired into many of our favorite fantasy games and novels to justify his own bitterly ugly RPG.

Myfarog by all accounts is a pretty crap game. But I don’t care if it reads or plays brilliantly. What matters is that Vikernes is transparent about the fact that it’s an PRG “based on European values, geography, (pre-) history, mythology, traditions, and morals.”

What does that mean? In his game, the white, Viking-like race is proud and strong and virtuous. The Koparmen (men with copper-colored skin) are “subhuman” and they aim to ruin the “lifestyle and culture” of their clean, northern lands.

One quick aside. Vikernes’ version of “pre-historic” Europe really is a fantasy. It’s a sick and childish dream-world of a time when white people were pure and strong, when the uncorrupted nobles were “almost always honorable men and women, good, just and hard working.” It’s pathetic, really.

But when he begins to contrast this make-believe race with the conniving and dishonorable darkies, it’s worse than pathetic. It’s creepy and disgusting.

Here’s my point. I don’t think silence about Myfarog is enough. Given our troubled history, I think it’s important for the key game companies, RPG writers and fans to explicitly condemn Myfarog. We need to make it clear that we reject this slime firmly and fully. We won’t have Jim Crow- or white-supremacist-flavored games in our hobby, period, full stop.

In part, this gesture is symbolic. The game industry has gotten better about speaking up about our need to be welcoming and inclusive. The art has grown less sexist. Attitudes toward LGBT gamers have improved. I love this trend and I want us to keep laying down markers that we’re going to keep moving in the right direction.

But there’s also a practical side to this. I’ve found a lot of chatter on-line about Myfarog, particularly from young white men who don’t appear to understand or grasp the game Vikerness is playing. Either they are just unaware of the racist foundations of Myfarog or they buy his argument that game is no more racially skewed than D&D or Pathfinder.

I’ve found reviews of the game that don’t treat the hatred and exclusion at the core of the game and instead view it as a cool Viking-themed RPG with awesome cover art. We need to spread the word that this game is toxic.

So here’s my shout-out. There’s a lot to debate and discuss when it comes to tolerance in gaming. But Myfarog lies outside the healthy bounds of that conversation. Myfarog is a game that should be condemned by all of us. Help send that message. This game has no place in the modern world of fantasy, RPGs or at any decent game table.

Captain Marsh

I'm a big fan of Monte Cook and Bruce Cordell. With a few reservations, I loved Numenera and have had a lot of fun GMing it. So I looked forward with a lot of excitement to reading and prepping a campaign in The Strange, their cypher-system-based campaign setting that involves a lot of plane-jumping and genre building.

Unfortunately, my response to The Strange has actually been pretty mixed. I think it's one of the more risk-taking RPG settings to appear over the last decade. But I'm skeptical about one of the central design choices - and one of the most important game mechanics - embedded within the game.

PCs who change over and over again

Cordell and Cook have designed a system where in nearly every adventure, the Player Characters will change in fundamental ways, possibly two or more times in a game session.

When PCs shift from one dimension (or "recursion") to another (and making these jumps is one of the coolest things about the setting), there is a strong likelihood that they will effectively become different people, with a new race, new gender, new equipment, and new game mechanic rules governing their abilities.

I think this idea is revolutionary and exciting in theory. It forces GMs and players to actually think about role-playing and about their characters as "characters" in a story. What does it mean that one moment your PC is a tough-talking gumshoe, a guy who carries a pistol, but the next moment she's a tough-talking knight if Ardeyn who summons magical fire?

But does it work at the game table?

I say that this is cool in theory, but I don't think it actually works very well in an RPG, for several reasons. The first is that it's just a pain in the butt. Imagine if every time your Pathfinder adventure shifted from one setting to another you had to swap out all the feat chains and equipment that make up your party's PCs.
Especially at high level, that's a nightmare. (The cypher system is more streamlined than Pathfinder's d20 mechanic, but reworking PCs is still a significant chore.)

More problematic is the fact that it's never explained in story terms how any of this makes any sense. Why should a private eye from earth translating into the magical realm of Ardeyn suddenly get to choose to be a dragon slayer or a Qephilim who can throw lances of light around? Why should a cyborg from Ruk get to choose to be a mountain man on earth who knows how to live in the wilderness?

What about the mystery?

The bigger problem, in my view, is that Cordell and Cook have eliminated a lot of the mystery that should come with arriving in each new plane. By this mechanic, PCs get to choose their new abilities in the new dimension ("We're translating into a fantasy world? Cool, I'll be a cleric now!") but they also arrive with a lot of basic background knowledge about each place they visit.

Say your plot takes the PCs from a world that looks like the Matrix into a world that looks like Earthsea. A PC built like Neo would get to refashion himself to look a lot like Ged and he'd also start off knowing the basics of life in the new world. The rules are careful to smooth this transition in a way that erases much of the excitement and risk of jumping dimensions and genres.

What about the genre bending?

Which leads me to my final point. This mechanic (and it really is fundamental to the game) also downplays one of the coolest possibilities that should have been a big part of The Strange, which is genre bending.

The truth is I don't want my Special Forces commando to become a knight when he enters a fantasy world. If I wanted to play a game where a knight fights a dragon, I'd play a different game. I want to play a Special Forces commando fighting a dragon. I don't want my Rukian cyborg to become a college professor when he arrives on earth. I want the story to be about a cyborg wandering around on earth. I think a lot of players will feel the same.

No quick fixes

Sadly, fixing this and allowing players to just stick with their PCs as they adventure across the dimensions won't be easy. Cordell and Cook do offer other ways to plane-travel that don't change the characters and their equipment. Tweaking those rules is easy enough. The bigger problem is that they didn't balance the various powers and abilities that appear on different worlds.

A PC who starts the adventure as a knight from Ardeyn who can channel sin-fire or a half-man-half-machine from Ruk with weapons built into his flesh will almost certainly be far more powerful than a private eye from Seattle who knows how to operate undercover or solve mysteries.

What's more, because of this reliance on morphing PCs, The Strange doesn't include any rules for multi-classing across genres. There's no way for that special ops soldier to pick up an intriguing new focus or equipment while on Ardeyn. According to these rules, he might shift into something cool and different temporarily. But when he comes back home, he's (mostly) just a mundane soldier again. That's a bummer.

How much cooler would it have been if by mid-campaign your special ops soldier who is "licensed to carry" is also able to "regenerate tissue"? Or your college professor who "conducts weird science" is also able to "shepherd the dead."

The bottom line? It's a beautiful mess.

After all that, it's going to sound like a back-handed compliment when I say that I love the risk-taking here. But my praise is sincere. This game plays with one of the fundamental conceits of the RPG, forcing players to deal with PCs who work and feel very, very different over time.

My suggestions, meanwhile, are much more conventional, much more old-school and predictable.

My sense of The Strange is that it's sort of like one of Quentin Tarantino movies that don't quite work. Even a messy Tarantino flick is fascinating and important and worth thinking about. I think this game really is pretty broken at its core, but it's not broken because Cordell and Cook were being lazy.

If I'm right, it's broken because they were trying to do something new and big. I hope other RPG designers are paying attention.

After a long run of GMing other folks' adventures - a couple of different Adventure Paths, a big chunk of Slumbering Tsar - I've finally found the time to put together a homebrew campaign.

I stumbled across a couple of ideas about story and a setting that I wanted to write up and my players were cool enough to go along. After three play sessions, it's gone really well. Here are some basic thoughts:

1. Yes, Pathfinder is rules heavy but the resources are all there in the books to make creating your own detailed world and adventures without a lot of stat-blocking and numbers crunching. You can do that stuff if you want, but I've spent essentially zero time on that kind of thing.

2. It's been really fun to try to mine the Bestiaries for under-appreciated low-level monsters, or to try to reinvent old stand-by monsters to make them fresh again. Some of the coolest critters are CR3 or lower.

3. I've pretty much shed all my old prejudices about running published adventures, so many of them are just so good. But there is something pretty great about having one of your own encounters, or NPCs, or plot twists really go over big.

4. It really is pretty awesome being able to allow the story to evolve more organically than in a published adventure. When someone at the table comes up with a cool idea or does something unexpected, I'm able to just roll with it, knowing I can adjust later encounters and NPCs with a lot more flexibility.

Finally - and this isn't homebrew specific but it's been part of the fun -- starting at low level again (after a lot of high level play in Slumbering Tsar) has given me a new appreciation of a lot of the 'new' classes and how they interact.

I'd been grumbling about there just being too much out there, but at least in the early going it all integrates pretty well. We have a kineticist, a fighter-magus, a rogue, a monk, an evoker, and a skald (all 2nd level) and it's one of the funnest parties I've ever run.

-Captain Marsh

I don't mean 'economy' like trading caravans and gold arbitrage...I mean 'economy' in the sense that players struggle to find enough ammunition, spell components and other necessaries to survive. Let me explain.

I've been working on a mid-to-low power Pathfinder campaign for some time which is basically designed to put the PCs in sort of a desperate/survival situation. Basics like food, water, rest, spell components, decent weapons, ammunition, etc. are in short supply.

The goal is to have a lot of the plot be driven by these challenges: You have to get from Point A to Point B to defeat the enemy, but you also have to (along the way) figure out how to find spell components (rabbits feet and butter, say) and enough food and water to keep you going.

I have a great story reason to do this - it serves the theme of the adventure I'm creating - and I also hope that it will bring forward some of the PF rules that I really like, including more of the skills and non-combat feats, also 'condition' rules like fatigue and exhaustion.

Some of my players have raised a (legitimate) concern that some of this might prove boring or frustrating. My hope is to avoid this by making sure that a lot of the challenges will be accompanied by a real sense of adventure (harvesting a spell component out from under the shadow of a dangerous lair, for example...) and a sense that useful skills can solve many of these problems.

("I use my survival spell to search the rocks for bat guano...")

But I'm wondering if others have tried this kind of mechanic and whether you have any advice about how to make it fun, and un-fun pitfalls to avoid.

-Marsh

I've posted a few times on the message boards about my experience running Greg Vaughan's Slumbering Tsar.

My gaming group reached kind of a milestone two weeks ago when we "finished" the portion of the adventure that deals with the wasteland -- the infamous Desolation -- that surrounds the ruined, haunted city of Tsar.

A couple of people I've messaged with have asked for thoughts about the adventure (and for campaign journals, which I don't have time to do...) so here goes.

*****SPOILERS*****************

First, a reminder of what Slumbering Tsar is. It's a massive campaign published by Frog God Games that takes PCs from 7th level to around 20th. My group is currently 9th and 10th level.

Including maps, handouts, appendices, etc. the whole thing runs about 950 pages. In the quality of writing and conceptualization, it's on par with Rise of the Rune Lords. In scale it's much longer, much more detailed.

WHAT I LOVED

Really, ST is everything you've heard about. It's just that good. It's the perfect marriage of an old-fashioned D&D grinder, with lots of combat and deadly challenges, but also tons of role-playing opportunities, fun and nuanced NPCs, and great color.

I've come to believe that Pathfinder is mostly about big moments. Yes, people want plot and danger and all the other stuff that makes up a story. But what sticks out at the gaming table are those epic moments, the near-death experiences, the moments of breakthrough, that perfectly timed crit-roll.

Vaughan spices those opportunities in regularly. The weird, lush haunted garden in the middle of the Desolation. The insane Apocalypse-now dwarves who are trying to survive in the midst of all the chaos and death. The strange ruined characters who haunt the Camp at the edge of the desolation.

It's a meat-grinder, but it's not just a meat-grinder.

WHAT I CHANGED

That said, I did change quite a lot of small things in the adventure. ST is a 'sandbox' which means that it's possible for PCs to make a lot of their own decisions. That's good.

But it can also mean game sessions where everything the players encounter is far too deadly, or far too easy.

In particular, the rules of Pathfinder make it sort of complicated for a GM to deal with hordes of low-level enemies who, when played as Vaughan has written them, simply can't hurt your PCs.

Vaughan seems to love "Walking Dead" style undead surges. And those should be really cinematic and creepy. But in Pathfinder, for PCs at the level envisioned by ST, it's actually more of a nuisance after a while.

(Not always. It's a gas for players to occasionally get to buzz-saw through ranks of enemies, especially after one too many life-or-death battles...but that gets old pretty quick.)

So I rewrote more of those mob-scene encounters to include fewer minions and more slightly tougher and more menacing bosses.

THE FOUR QUADRANTS

The Desolation is basically four different Desolations. In his amazing imaginative deep-dive, Vaughan wasn't happy with one Ashen Waste or one Chaos Rift. He wanted to throw everything into one adventure, from bubbling tar pits to charnel valleys full of undead.

It's awesome and epic. My one suggestion is to read through everything carefully and start teasing out foreshadowing and plot elements that will keep players wanting to explore the whole thing.

The challenge here is to keep it fresh, to keep the motivation strong. I managed a good solid B on this front, I think, by developing a much stronger set of explanations for why the PCs are in the Desolation than the ones that Vaughan suggests.

I think GMs should really talk about this in advance with the players. Make sure they understand the scope of this adventure and the need to keep helping you find reasons that their characters would care enough to keep diving into this insane, deadly madness.

LITTLE STUFF

It's also important to move some things around in Slumbering Tsar. The really awesome troll brothers who should offer the introduction to the Chaos Rift are located on the map in a place where the PCs might never encounter them -- or might encounter them at the end of the adventure.

Also, the Boiling Lands offer, in many ways, the least deadly set of encounters -- and encounters which in many instances don't move the plot forward much. There are some great set pieces there, not to be missed. But find a way as a GM to get your players there early. And find some ways to tie it in more deeply to the adventure.

There are other little things that I felt were just weirdly placed or sort of tucked away in odd corners. Again, read carefully and see what elements you want to pull forward.

POWER CREEP

My next big point is power creep. ST as written was meant to be really, really deadly. That's part of the fun. There is a long section in the back of the book for PC obituaries. Sounds corny, but my players have had fun writing in the names of their characters when they died.

But the truth is that PF has seen so much power creep that a lot of ST isn't that menacing. Some of it still is. But as a game master, you should really think about pacing and maybe tweaking the CR of your threats.

The biggest problem I've found is that ST was written as an "attrition-economy" threat. That is, it's supposed to wear PCs down and make them really think about their choices.

But PF now has so many characters with so many renewable or permanent abilities that this just doesn't come into play so much. I find that with PCs of this level, basically all damage (including ability damage, diseases, etc.) will be cured or healed after every combat encounter.

So that part of the menace, the sense of being worn down, is a bit harder to create. I found that this was easy to remedy by turning a few of the 'wandering monster' encounters into more deliberate, structured clashes which I wrote.

I also used those opportunities to help move the plot along and develop more foreshadowing and a sense that the overall story was going someplace.

THE STORY ITSELF

Which brings me to my final observation. In the end, ST actually has a pretty good story with a ton of amazing characters. But the truth is that a lot of it is pretty hidden.

This isn't unique to Vaughan's adventure. A lot of times in Adventure Paths or other big published campaigns, I find myself running NPCs who have huge back stories and really cool identities, which really the players have almost no way of knowing or interacting with.

The big bad guy (or woman) is dead before the PCs really grasped how big and bad he (or she) really was.

So my two-fold suggestion here is, first, read the whole adventure carefully. Mark out the big plot themes and the big, ominous NPCs and their schemes. Figure out how the threads knot together.

Start peppering those ideas into the players' experience early. Vaughan hints at some of this but more is needed. I'm not saying railroad PCs. But as written, it's possible for players to go a really long time without really grasping what's going on or what the danger is beyond the next encounter.

Some of this can happen in color. PCs can have haunted dreams or be visited by visions. You can use existing NPCs like the Peddler and the Usurer to drop hints about what's to come.

Secondly, I would suggest that GMs playing this huge tome be careful to...slow down. I found that at times I was sort of rushing players through different chapters, knowing that there was (and is) so much goodness to come.

And the truth is that my players have gotten kind of impatient. This story is, after all, about Slumbering Tsar, the haunted city. They've looked from afar on the Black Gates for months (in real time and in game time). They want to get in there.

Fair enough. But remember to treat each section of Tsar and each gaming session as a prime moment to explore really beautifully crafted chapters of a larger adventure. If you run this thing, remember that it's main strength is that it offers you a chance to create those incredible, memorable gaming moments.

I'll end with a little story from our last session.

My players ended their main sojourn in the Desolation by taking on the tar dragon Malerix. They lured him inside a ruined structure, hoping to trap him and limit his mobility -- which worked. It was great ploy and Malerix in his arrogance fell for it.

But they also set his tarry hide on fire, and it turned out he wasn't bothered at all by fire...which meant that 9 PCs (we had a big group that weekend) were trapped in a burning building with a writhing, vicious, deadly dragon.

Because they'd had glimpses of Malerix for months, and they knew that he was the last monster between themselves and the city, they stuck to the fight. It was one of those sessions that balanced perfectly on the edge of a TPK -- at various times three different PCs were below zero hit points -- but in the end everyone survived.

Next Saturday, they begin their assault on the city of Orcus itself, a well-earned next step. If the last year of gaming in Vaughan's campaign is any evidence, it should be epic.

--Captain Marsh

I DM'd the latest installment of my Slumbering Tsar campaign last Saturday and I found myself feeling sort of bummed that it didn't go super well. I mean, it was fine. But this was the big, climactic battle against Malerix outside the Black Gate. It should have been awesome. And it wasn't.

I mention this because the last two years, I've really been trying to get better. Not just better table prep and more conscious, fun-focused DMing. I've actually been scouring the web, looking for advice columns, Youtube videos and other resources.

I've actually gone back and read the "How to DM" sections in all my old rule books. What gems did I miss while rushing through to the "must know" stuff, while assuming that I had the "soft skills" of DMing down pat and just needed to know the rules before building my next adventure?

And all of that stuff helped. But I have to say, I still feel like the state of the art of DMing and the system for training and educating new (and improving DMs) around the world is still remarkably primitive, or at least underdeveloped.

The bottom line is that you can have the best rule system, the most awesome setting, a brilliantly designed adventure (thanks, Greg Vaughan) and a group of willing, engaged players -- but if your DM is muddled or lackluster or just plain unskilled, it's all going to fall flat.

A lot has been written recently about the need to recruit and retain more players. New boxed sets are produced. Comic books are issued. On-line versions of games are experimented with. But it seems to me that, unless I'm missing something, the most obvious next step is being ignored.

If Paizo wants Pathfinder to be THE premier fantasy RPG on the market, it needs to have the best stable of DMs. These gals and guys would be the evangelizers for the game all over the world. As much as people are drawn to the system and the adventures produced by Paizo, they would be drawn to the local, grassroots entertainers (dungeon masters) cultivated with help from the company.

In this comment I don't want to try to specify how a campaign like this should work or what specific skills and concepts it should try to impart. But I will say that the precedents exist already for this kind of global campaign to improve the game.

By using some of the ideas buried in organized play systems and in the Superstar design competition, you could develop a truly awesome, fun and constructively competitive approach to having DMs at various levels sharing their best ideas for how to run a table.

Just by searching around the web, I've found clues and tips and strategies that have made my games 20% better. I bet with a more structured approach, Paizo could boost the overall standards of DMing in the PF community by a bigger margin.

Especially if you structured the program for different levels of experience -- one section for starting DMs, another for veterans trying to freshen their approach -- I think there'd be a lot of buy-in.

The bottom line is that DMing is a blast and a really vital part of gaming, but it's also far less easy and intuitive than a lot of people think. A lot of tables are winding up with a sub-par experience because this one pivotal player in our shared experience just hasn't been exposed to the best ideas and resources.

I think Paizo should spend some of its growing gaming heft to change that.

--Captain Marsh

The gaming group I'm part of is about ten four-hour sessions into the Slumbering Tsar mega-campaign from Frog God games. This is, I think, the largest single adventure/campaign ever written, and when it arrives in the mail it looks like a brilliant behemoth of highly detailed encounters, amazing NPCs, weird cool ideas, etc.

So how does it actually play? Well, broadly speaking, amazingly well. It's famously sand-boxy, meaning PCs explore, encounter, stumble into encounters, and have to be really flexible to stay alive. That means running away sometimes. That means character death is a reality. If your players aren't into dying sometimes and rolling up new PCs, this isn't for you.

But my players have really committed to the sense that this is an apocalyptic place where things can go really wrong fast. (Three of five PCs died in our last game and while there was a bit of TPK shellshock at the table, guys were really cool about it.) They love the deviant plot ideas that Greg Vaughan cooked up. Basically, I've never had characters get so deeply invested in a campaign.

This is also an awesome opportunity for players to do a bit of power-gaming. DMs should exercise some caution about this (more on this note later) but with some caveats, and some cautions about way over-powered third-party publishers material, Slumbering Tsar is a great place to battle-test awesome PC builds.

It's also truly epic in length. After roughly forty hours of play, the party has explored perhaps 1/20th of the death zone that Vaughan created, and hasn't even dared to go near the actual city of Tsar that lies at the heart of darkness.

That said, here are some thoughts about things I had to sort out at my game table.

First, the 'sand box' ideal only takes a story so far. After allowing my players to drift and explore a bit, I found that it was necessary to introduce a kind of meta-plot that would pull them forward. They still get to make all the decisions, and can chase squirrels whenever they want. But in my DMing experience, players will eventually need some motivation to keep going.

This turned out to be fairly easy to fix. I pulled forward some of the NPCs and gave them a stronger tie to Orcus's larger conspiracy -- and, frankly, I made it clear much earlier in the adventure that there is indeed a scheme by Orcus underway. Not that all the denizens of the adventure are involved...so there's still just a lot of random weirdness.

The second thing I needed to do was keep refreshing the Camp. This jumping-off point for the adventure and home base is a really iconic setting with colorful, ominous NPCs and a kind of cool ecology of stuff going on. But that gets disrupted pretty quickly as the PCs move in. So I found that I needed to cook up new weird NPCs and new weird denizens that could keep it fresh. This was fun, pretty easy...I mention it only because it's one of the few "must-do" fixes I've found.

Thirdly, the power creep in Pathfinder has somewhat surpassed Slumbering Tsar's infamous lethality. So I've had to carefully, subtly boost the adventure's risk factors. I've also tweaked encounters where Vaughan has created enemies that almost literally can't touch the PCs because of an unbalanced attack-vs.-armor class situation.

I think this largely reflects a new reality in Pathfinder. One BBEG and a lot of super-weak minions just isn't much challenge. Instead, you need a BBEG with a handful of reasonably powerful minions to make an interesting encounter.

I've also somewhat slowed level-advancement progression, using various means, to keep the PCs from outpacing the story's dangers. All in all, the power balance stuff is easily handled.

Finally, a very personal opinion. This is the first adventure I've run in the post 3.0 D&D/Pathfinder era where I felt like miniatures actually got in the way.

Vaughan's encounters and settings are so cinematic, so varied and cool and (sometimes) complex that I just feel like the mechanical fixity of little tabletop figures get in the way and sort of reduces the epic-ness.

Obviously, this is extremely subjective. Some DMs will have a ton of fun creating some of these magnificent set-piece encounters (dwarven patriots battling desperately against waves of undead, mutated spiders swarming up out of a crevasse in the earth).

But I'd at least urge you to experiment with it both ways, trying out your minis, but also trying some sessions without them.

Above all else, I'd encourage you to get this book. It's pricey. But if nothing else, it's an encyclopedic collection of encounters, new monsters, awesomely detailed NPCs and captivating one-off adventures that could drop into any world, any adventure. Played as structured, there is a vast saga here for players to act out and attempt to survive.

--Marsh

Hi folks.

I'm running a part of the Slumbering Tsar campaign tomorrow and in theory it looks epic. This is a chapter where the PCs make a desperate stand on a hill top with a gang of dwarven adventurers, facing wave after wave of undead.

Eventually, things get really sticky - more powerful undead, and a fairly lethal big bad evil guy to top it all off. But the part I'm a little uncertain about is how to run the horde portion and have it feel claustrophobic and desperate and panicked.

My specific problems are these:

1. How do I handle what will eventually be roughly 100 NPCs at the same time (including the dwarven 'good guys') without the whole mess bogging down? I'm looking for really cool, cinematic ideas that will make this really elevate. (We are using minis for this episode, btw...)

2. What do I do about the fact that my PCs have really high ACs? I mean, the truth is that the vast majority of these undead hordes are basically almost certain not to hit except on nat-20s. I've thought about having them essentially do grapple checks, trying to overwhelm the party. But most of the PCs also have high CMD...

I want this to feel more like Walking Dead, not like swatting mosquitoes...any ideas appreciated.

--Marsh

Dear Paizo,

You guys are my favorite hobby company in the world, which is saying a lot for a lifelong nerd like myself. Love your games, love your community, love your writers and artists.

But unless you give me a better explanation for why your customer service is so terrible, I will never, ever order directly from your store again.

I ordered a $150 book 3 weeks ago. Shipping was supposed to happen within two weeks, which is already a ridiculously sloppy amount of time for any company in the age of Amazon.

Then, today, I get an email which says that my order has finally been "processed and finalized for shipment." Great. Really slow, but great.

But then I read that the package is "expected to ship from the Paizo warehouse by Friday, November 21 via Standard Postal Delivery, estimated 4 to 8 business days in transit."

November 21st? WTF? If the thing is process and finalized, put it in the $%*$# mail! At this rate, I will have been waiting for my purchase for as much as six weeks.

And that "expected to ship" part REALLY ticks me off. Expected? What...is your warehouse in Sandpoint or something?

The kicker to the email is that there is no explanation for the delay, no apology -- only a note that my order can "no longer be altered."

On this message board I see a lot of other complaints about slow and sloppy shipping practices.

Maybe it's time for a quick public note about what's going on? The holidays are coming up. If you want people shopping from Paizo, you need to fix this and do some communication.

--Angry Marsh

I ordered a Slumbering Tsar and we're nearing the two week mark and it looks like the book hasn't shipped yet. Is there a way to nudge it forward?

So after being deeply intrigued by Numenera as a game system and a world concept, I've had the opportunity to GM three sessions so far.

A lot went right. The games were fun, intriguing, and the new mechanics re-energized me and my players. I think the game is really, really interesting.

But because Numenera is so ambitious, and represents a significant work by one of the RPG world's great designers, Monte Cook, I think it warrants serious critical response as well.

I took a stab at this once before, but now I know the game a lot better and have really tested it.

Cook is clearly being really ambitious here. In the best spirit of that effort, I want to hold him to those standards.

I think the game's shortcomings fall into three broad categories: serious DM challenges, the lack of weirdness in the 9th World, and really quite dull published adventures.

DM CHALLENGES: INTRUSIONS

Numenera envisions a situation where DMs will use dice-prompts and a system of traded experience points to insert provocative and creative events into the narrative.

It's a really cool idea. Particularly when players roll a natural 1 or a natural 20, the DM is encouraged to add an "intrusion" that expands the drama and boosts the narrative.

The problem is that this kind of improvisation is really hard to do in real-time. I've tried it and I've watched others try it on the growing number of Numenera Youtube and podcast play sessions available.

Sometimes the outcome is really dynamic. But when you add a jazz-improvisation element like this, you are raising the bar dramatically for DMs. I think Cook should develop some better systems to help us make that work -- quickly.

He's already offering a random "Cypher" deck and an "XP" deck. I think the game actually NEEDS the equivalent of an "Intrusion" deck. This is something the DM would draw from, consult, and then adapt to the circumstances of the game.

Sometimes a DM will be able to wing it without this kind of support. But as a relatively experienced DM, I often found myself struggling to make magic happen on the fly...and I don't think I'm alone.

LACK OF WEIRDNESS

This is a tough thing because true weirdness is incredibly difficult to achieve in narrative without also killing the forward motion of the story.

But far, far too much of Numenera is, well, profoundly scrutable. It reflects current sensibilities, and even a sort of vaguely retro vibe about "cool, strange technology."

A lot of that is fine. We want robots and nano-particles and so on in Numenera. But this world is supposed to be set a BILLION years in the future.

There should be at least a few elements in the game that really make you blink and say "What the hell?" Maybe even some "Call of Cthulhu" like elements where PCs are just hopelessly outmatched or baffled.

Far too many of Numenera's monsters are basically, in the final equation, a ghost or a vampire or a zombie or a dinosaur explained in a different way. As structured, there's a risk that the weirdest elements that are outlined in Numenera will essentially be background to a conventional plot.

I found myself struggling against this a bit and would urge DMs to really find ways to keep pulling as much weirdness as possible into the heart of each play session.

UNDERWHELMING ADVENTURES

This is my biggest concern. I think Monte Cook is amazing as a game designer and a setting creator. Even the shortcomings of the 9th World setting, as I see them, are shortcomings related to a very high bar or standard.

But I also think Cook has a fairly spotty record as an adventure designer.

Years ago, I bought Cook's Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and remember thinking, "This is kind of a mess." (I don't own Ptolus, so I can't comment on whether the adventures contained there are as great as the setting...)

I think the same can be said for the first several published adventures in Numenera. They're not terrible. But the Beale of Boregal, Seedship, and the Vortex are fairly predictable and static.

I don't think they come anywhere close to capturing the spirit of what Numenera could be.

The Devil's Spine was better, but still not a story arc that made me think, "Yes -- this is what this game was meant to do."

And that's a problem. For a game as ambitious as Numenera, and as focused on narrative, Cook needs to drive interest and capture loyalty with some absolutely kick-ass, "we'll remember this ten years from now" adventures.

Those early markers could really define whether the game lives up to its potential and builds a community.

I think Paizo did this effectively with Rise of the Runelords, in particular. They proved tangibly, with a big collection of linked stories, that the Pathfinder engine and the Golarion setting could take us to some amazing places.

I guess I want to see that soon from Monte Cook. I know that he's already moved on to working on a related game -- The Strange.

But as a huge fan of Numenera, I hope his team will have enough backward focus to craft at least one really big adventure that takes this game out for a drive -- a story we'll all be adding to our list of top gaming memories.

After quite a few years of happily playing in Paizo's awesome sandbox -- a huge fan of Pathfinder, Adventure Paths, and Golarion -- I suddenly realized this summer that I'm ready for a big change.

Paizo, I think, has followed the same company arc that we've seen so many RPG brands navigate. They started by publishing a great rule system and a great setting.

Then, to keep the cash flow going (which is a good thing, not a bad thing) and because they are creative people, they've elaborated upon that rule system to the point of near exhaustion.

The latest book offering TWENTY new core classes? That pretty much stopped me in my tracks. As a DM, my table and my game group were already creaking under too many options, too many complex mechanics.

I would prepare a story, or gear up to run one of Paizo's adventures, and I never knew what circus menagerie was going to wind up in the party of PCs.

I'm a decent DM. I know the core rules really well. But I was always one step behind my players when it comes to how all their powers and abilities work.

Meanwhile, to heighten my desire for something different, Numenera and D&D 5.0 arrived in the gaming world, both with far more math-and-fine-print light, far more story-heavy architectures.

I ran a Numenera game last weekend and I have to say, it was a liberation. Preparation was easy and focused almost entirely on story, not stat blocks. Battles took a quarter the time to run and were far more fun and dynamic and cinematic.

Players, meanwhile, had a ton of fun making up PCs using a far simpler, more story-based series of templates. Half the crunch and still far more unique. My sense of D&D 5.0 is that it moves in the same direction.

So why not just switch? Why not jump ship if I want something a little different? (A lot of you are probably already typing a reply telling me to get the hell out of the sandbox...)

The truth is that I want to stay with Paizo and Pathfinder, for much the same reason that I stayed with Pathfinder as 3.0 and 3.5 were dying out.

I like the continuity. I like having all my old adventures and campaigns still be somewhat forward engineer-able.

I'm also absolutely convinced that Paizo will continue to be the best adventure-writing company in the gaming world. I want to run their Adventure Paths.

So, as regular loyal customer, here's what I want from Paizo:

I want them to earn their next pile of bucks by producing a streamlined, narrative-rich version of Pathfinder.

Not just a "beginner's box," but an actual parallel rule structure that exists comfortably side-by-side with the more byzantine version of Pathfinder that's come into existence.

I get that one way to "solve" this is by simply banning (at my table) a lot of the material published after the Pathfinder core rulebooks were released.

But I bet there's a more exciting way for the game gurus at Paizo to do this -- one that would be a profitable way for Paizo to compete with and match the new innovations coming from Wizards and Monte Cook.

This next part is important: I don't want people to think that I'm hostile to products like the Advanced Class Guide.

They're not to my taste. But I know there are a lot of great DMs and super-fun players who completely love that stuff and will never get enough feats and spells and class abilities and races -- that's cool.

But I think Paizo can do that stuff and offer a kind of alternate, streamlined cross-compatible system.

So...here's my memo to Paizo: Put that version of Pathfinder in a hard-back book with a lot of fun art and charge $50 for it...and I'll be your first customer.

Captain Marsh

I'm probably late to the party, but I urge any Pathfinder or tabletop RPGer to check out the DiceStormer Youtube channel.

These guys are modeling some awesome game-table strategies, they're offering fun snapshots of some of the adventure paths, and it's an entertaining way to get a fix of a great Pathfinder session when you can't drop dice yourself.

I've picked up some cool tips for running games from these guys and it's helped me preview some of the published adventures.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiHMbAFXhVslHs0wPd8-JrA

-Captain Marsh

I've played Pathfinder from its inception, and D&D since the late 1970s. I'm a huge fan of what Paizo has done with the gaming community and with the d20 system in particular.

As I've written here before, I think Paizo is really the first major gaming company that wrote actual stories that players and DMs could bring to life -- full of character and tension and still blessed with a lot of open-ended "sandbox" play.

Yet here I am in 2014 wanting something new. I feel like my time in Golarion has pretty much run its course.

I also feel like the basic structure of the Adventure Paths - which redefined how I think of RPG narrative arcs -- is no longer producing the kind of stop-me-in-my-tracks work that I used to see.

Don't get me wrong, there are still brilliant moments, flashes of weird creative brilliance. But not as often.

Rather than finding new ways to wow me with absolutely crazy imaginary settings and conflicts, I feel like there's more and more rules-lawyer tomes, longer and longer lists of feats and spells and character classes and variants.

And again, I get it. I understand that the business model of RPGs requires some of this stuff. A lot of gamers want more and more of those rule clusters. Building characters using 12 different books is half the fun.

But as a certified Paizo junky-fanboy, I'm ready for the next thing that doesn't feel sort of middle-aged and typical and "this is where RPGs always go in their life-cycle."

Is it time for a new world? I know that's dangerous and has really hurt game systems in the past. Or how about a one-shot hardcover mega-adventure written entirely by one auteur-quality writer?

How about a series of "adult" adventures, by which I mean adventures which emphasize -- really dramatically -- things like role-playing and mystery solving and the "world inhabiting" experience, rather than combat?

Finally, I'll admit that I don't really know exactly what I want. Just like I don't know that I really want that next brilliant Quentin Tarantino film or Joe Abercrombie novel until it appears. That's the job of artists, after all, doing something so cool and engaging and new that it takes an audience into an entirely new place.

So this is a greed post, really. Paizo has done that for me in the past and I want them to do it again.

I know none of these ideas will ever be Paizo's bread and butter, but six years after Pathfinder was launched I think tilting at windmills and being experimental is a great idea for a creativity-based company.

--Captain Marsh

So I started an occasional review of Numenera a few weeks ago by posting some concerns about the engine at the heart of the game.

The mechanics of Monte Cook's much-heralded Kickstarter-funded RPG struck me as surprisingly clunky and math-heavy.

In part two of the review, I want to talk about my first time taking the game out of the garage.

I ran a game last weekend with four players at the table - two jacks, a glaive, and a nano, all fairly experienced gamers.

First, I'll say that the mechanics are, in fact, a bit awkward.

To recap, the GM sets a difficulty level (1-10), the players try to adjust the difficulty level of each task dowwnward using skills, special effort, and other tactics.

The final number is multiplied by 3 and the players roll a d20 to try to beat that amount.

(So a difficulty seven task knocked down to a difficulty four task would be multiplied by 3 to produce a challenge number of 12...)

There was some muddly confusion over all this, and a bit of exasperation, but it wasn't the end of the world.

Second, I'll say in as uncomplicated a way as possible that we had a really great time playing Numenera.

The general setting, which is sort of a mishmash of post-apocalypse-sci-fi-fantasy-horror genres with lots of "magical items" and tons of general "weirdness" was a big hit.

In my adventure, I adapted parts of Cook's "Vortex" module with my own home-brew adventure.

The session involved a group of PCs with amnesia trying to sort out their identities, first by escaping the clutches of a mind-controlling alien, then by infiltrating a mysterious temple to recover vials which contained their stolen memories.

Along the way, they battled margr goat-men, encountered a group of parasitic "Filthers" -- intelligent parasites who use captured humans as their digestive systems -- and fought their way past deadly claw-bots.

The players loved their mix of powers and abilities, and really enjoyed the throw-away "cypher" magical items that are a big part of the game's flavor.

So that was all good.

Finally, I'll say that, sadly, parts of Cook's goal in creating Numenera remained unfulfilled -- at least so far -- at our table.

The game as written is supposed to encourage really innovative, colorful, in-character role-playing and storytelling.

Players are rewarded with experience points largely for coming up with cool narrative events and bits of drama.

Similarly, GMs are encouraged to regularly throw cool plot twists -- intrusions -- at the PCs that add spice and color.

I really like the idea of a mechanics-driven, constantly-reenforced story element boost in a game's design.

It nudges you not to just fall into a combat-round-after-combat-round rhythm...

But the simple truth is that this "live theater" stuff is hard.

A lot of the time, despite my nudging, my players fell back on saying, "I stab him with my spear" or "I shoot him with my buzzer."

Meanwhile, on the fly, I found it pretty difficult to come up with cool, colorful intrusions as often as the game suggested.

(I succeeded maybe 25% of the time in brainstorming something cool...)

Still...the bottom line is that I took a head-count at the end of the first session and everyone wanted to try another Numenera session.

So maybe we'll get better at upping our game in the way that Cook envisions?

Still to come in my series of reviews:

I'll look at the published adventures that have appeared so far and finally at the 9th World setting itself.

In the weeks to come, I plan to write a series of essays about Monte Cook's Numenera.

Before this first installment, I want to make a couple of points. First, I love Cook's work and I think he should be taken seriously.

He is as close to an auteur game-maker as the RPG world has produced, and he hits a lot more than he misses.

So when I'm critical (and this first essay will be) it should be taken in that light.

A tough review of a Woody Allen movie doesn't mean the reviewer thinks Woody Allen is a hack. Same goes here.

Secondly, some of my later essays -- about elements of the 9th world, the use of magic items in the game, etc. -- will be mostly glowing.

I want to spend some more time with those elements before writing about them.

Thirdly, this first installment is a read-through review only. I haven't DM'd Numenera yet and I'll plan to revise my thoughts after a few sessions at the game table.

As we all know, rules and adventures sometimes play a lot different than they read. In this case, I hope that's true.

Those caveats aside, I think there is a startlingly broken series of mechanics at the heart of Numenera.

In theory, Cook's goal is to lessen the math and erase a lot of the crunchy "look-it-up-in-the-rulebook" muddle, while pushing gamers more toward story and mystery and weirdness.

I personally love that idea. I want Cook to keep looking for experimental ways to make tabletop games into vivid stories.

But I don't think he succeeded here.

The core of Numenera is a system called Task Difficulty. Once a Player announces an action or goal, the DM sets a difficulty level of 1-10.

So far so good. Sounds more or less the same, but maybe a bit simpler than the DC (Difficulty Class) system in Pathfinder, which can run (in theory) from 1 up to infinity.

But now things get a bit gooey. Once the DM has set the Task Difficulty level, the Player then offers up various skills, levels of effort, magical effects, etc., that might lower that number.

(A person trained in a skill, for example, automatically has the Task Difficulty dropped by one. A person specialized in a skill drops the Task Difficulty by two.)

So with the right effort, skills and assets, a nearly impossible difficulty level of 10 might be negotiated down to a 6 or a 5.

Then -- and this is the part that gets a bit rough -- the final number is multiplied by 3.

The product of that random process (in effect, 0-30) is the "DC" that the Player then has to match on a d20 roll.

So...why all that up-down rigamarole? Why not just go with a d20 DC system and institute a two-tiered numeric skill level system?

It's not clear.

There's nothing inherent in the process that I can see that pushes more "story" into the game. There are still skills, magical effects, and so on.

There are a couple of cool innovations tacked on.

In Cook's imagining, once the player finally rolls the d20, interesting "interventions" are supposed to happen for both high rolls and low rolls.

These are build-in nudges, where the DM is supposed to complicate the story or add narrative detail and color.

But that idea, lovely as it is, could easily be added to the much simpler and straight-forward d20 system.

Another idea that Cook offers is that Players always do the dice rolling. They roll to hit, for example, but they also roll to avoid being hit.

Kind of clever, in theory. It frees up the DM to focus on storytelling, and it keeps players engaged and tossing dice.

But the truth is that a lot of DMs (myself included) like rolling dice.

And it's also arguably less fun for a specific monster or NPC to always have the same static "beat this number" challenge level.

Dodging a critter's attack can be more fun and tense if the critter's danger-level and fortunes shift from round to round.

But again, the big problem here isn't the new, interesting ideas. I'm guessing some of those will be house-ruled into a lot of Pathfinder campaigns.

Really, it's that clumsy "1-10-up-down-multiply-by-three-then-roll-d20" engine at the heart of the game that strikes me as squidgy.

A bit of a throwback to the complexities of THAC0, actually.

My hope is that the secret goodness of this reveals itself to me and my players when we sit to the table.

But I'm skeptical. The gameplay example included in the book is startlingly static and mathy - not very promising.

To be honest, I'd like for Cook to explain all this a bit. I found one essay where he suggests that he moved away from d20 just to "do something new."

http://www.montecookgames.com/why-not-d20/

Fair enough, but something new -- when you are Monte Cook and you're rolling out something as ambitious as Numenera -- should be something better.

So again, I'm starting with my biggest beef so far. There will be some more skeptical essays, but also some glowing, overjoyed ones.

And let me wrap with a statement of principle here. This isn't flamewar, snarky stuff. I love Cook and plan to DM Numenera.

I take his work seriously and hope I've begun to review it in that respectful spirit.

-Capt. Marsh

Has anyone compiled a good list of all the available Paizo references to Khorvosa? I have the basic stuff - Crimson Throne path, city setting guide. How about stand-alone adventure modules? And has anyone created any good independent GM content? Maps, statted NPCs?

Any help appreciated.

-Marsh

So after DMing Pathfinder, 3.5 and 3.0 over the last decade or so, I've come to think that my next big challenge is to improve the 'negative space' in my games.

What I mean by this is that too much of the time spent by players between "their" turns is dissolving into distractions, non-game related muddle, and energy-sucking behavior.

I'm not blaming my players. The truth is that I haven't found a great way to "involve" them when they're not actively rolling dice or attacking or defending or role-playing.

I've created a kind of binary on-off switch in my games. It's either 'your turn' or you're not really playing - you're on the sidelines.

Honestly, I'm not sure what the answer here is. But here are some ideas I'm playing with.

One thing is to encourage players to be better audience members. When it's not your turn, enjoy the show - don't look for other entertainment outside the game.

Another suggestion is for players to do better prep between turns. You know you're up soon, so dig in and really think about the situation and what you can do, how your spells will work, etc.

I can also do better as a DM to share around the interaction with the world when it's 'my turn.' Try to involve as many PCs as I can when the NPCs are doing their thing.

But maybe there are other good ideas out there?

My goal here isn't to eliminate out-of-game distractions. Joking and side-chatter is fine up to a point.

But the truth is that even with a small four-person player group, it'll only be your turn about 20 percent of the time.

If we can improve and deepen the other 80 percent of the table experience for players, that could really transform game night.

So - mostly this is a bid for fresh ideas. How do you, as a player, improve your fun when it's not your turn?

And as DM, what do you do to make sure that your players are as engaged as possible in the session even when you're interacting with someone else's PC?

--Marsh

I'm a huge fan of Pathfinder. For all its quirks and limitations, it is a remarkably intuitive, agile, fun system to play.

The last couple of weeks, reading the message boards and playing with my local group, it's occurred to me that PF is maybe a little better than we are.

Let me explain.

I like to ski. And sometimes people poke fun at me for my lousy, last-generation, dinged-up equipment.

My answer: "My skis may be crummy, but they're at least as good as I am."

In other words, the hardware isn't holding me back.

There was a time in RPGs when the hardware regularly held us all back.

But now -- in metaphorical terms -- our skis are better than we are. the game flows better than a lot of us, myself included, know how to play it.

Some of that is fixed with experience and play-testing.

But I think there are shortcuts and non-intuitive fixes that can make table play better.

Not by continuing to hink the rules, but by offering a sort of primer on how to be a next-generation player.

The rules would include basic things like table etiquette and important foundational rules to understand.

But this splat book for players would also get into things like how to really role-play if you're kind of shy and don't think particularly well on your feet.

What are some short-cuts to coming up with a lively table presence if that kind of thing doesn't come naturally to you?

The book would unravel party strategies and give more advanced examples of how different classes interact.

It could also offer really cool advice for how players can help DMs create a better, more immersive imagined environment.

A basic short chapter might be called something like: "What do you do when it's not your turn?"

Another brief chapter: "If I'm bored, what do I do to help the game?"

Another, longer chapter, might outline the different play styles that are necessary for different genres of play.

Too many players at my table struggle to adapt when we shift from the dungeon to the urban setting, or from the diplomatic session to the battle lines.

Finally, a basic part of the primer would be helping players get past the anti-social crud that gums up otherwise-good gaming groups.

A lot of players just don't get that there's a complex social contract at the table.

The goal is not for your PC to be dominant, or for you to win the most gold or XPs.

The goal is for a group of people to create a shared story and have a crap-load of fun along the way.

So...am I naive?

Or would a short, soft-cover book touching on strategies, play-styles, etiquette and deeper role-playing would level up a lot of game tables?

--Marsh

So I've been running a really steady ROTRL campaign, with lots of sidetrips, including a big journey to Kaer Maga.

The players have met regularly for about four months now, nearly weekly, occasionally even twice a week.

And here's the truth: It's feeling a little stale.

It's not the adventure. That's great. It's just the energy level in the room, my DMing, and maybe just a little over-familiarity...

I dunno. Anyone else have this problem?

I noticed a guy yawning during a battle with a black dragon today.

I guess I know the fixes. Get back to basic storytelling, make sure the NPCs seem engaging, create narrative tension...

Or maybe it's time to take a little break? I worry about doing that because we have such a good steady game-night going.

Any thoughts?

Marsh

I love the Adventure Path series and generally like the slow, evolutionary tweaks that have happened over time since the first ROTRL series.

Yes, a few AP's have sputtered and stuttered, but all have been interesting, worthy efforts that captured the imagination of at least some gamer groups.

One element, though, that seems worthy of a major overhaul -- to my eye -- is the fiction that takes up a chunk of each installment.

I love reading fantasy. I even occasionally enjoy short fantastic fiction.

But there's something about the style and the episodic nature of the Pathfinder Journal that just doesn't work for me.

This is no disrespect to the authors. I often recognize some good, solid writing.

And I get the idea that fiction is a way to flesh out the atmosphere of Golarion.

But I just don't ever find myself engaging the stories or the characters in ways that get me to the end.

I wonder if other regular purchasers and players agree that this is real estate that could be better used in other ways?

One MUCH more useful element for my gaming table would be a series of pages devoted to 1" grid maps usable for key battles in each AP installment.

If Paizo printed 3-5 pages of miniature-scaled maps per episode, I'd be over the moon as a DM...and that also seems like an element that would be fairly easy to produce.

-Capt Marsh

I'm a big fan of the Pathfinder rules.

But I think one "canon" variant that Paizo should introduce is a system of Magic-style cards that interact directly with the RPG.

The first cards issued would pretty much resemble the various spells thrown by different magic users at different levels.

(Divine and arcane)

You would play them as you would currently play a spell in the game as written.

I want to play a magic missile -- I lay it on the table. I want to turn invisible, I place that card next to my character sheet as a buff.

But slightly different rules -- and new cards --would gradually allow the cards (and therefore the spells) to be played in more flexible way.

There would be far more "instant" spell cards, which could be used by any spellcaster at the table to counter, or modify, other spells being cast.

Non-spellcaster PCs carrying magic items might also possess "instant" spell cards, allowing them to counter or mitigate the impact of spell cards played against them.

And so on.

This would allow for magic duels that would, in a small way, resemble the contests that occur in the card game Magic.

Cards could be packaged by Paizo as "spellbook expansions."

New cards could be issued on a regular basis, with commons, rares, and extremely rares mixed in.

Packs of special deluxe "summoning" cards could come pre-packaged with the monster stats printed on the cards, along with mini pawns.

A magic user who summons a new type of creature is ready to play.

This kind of "collectible" product would add a fresh new dimension to the magic rules, and mean cool new spells being introduced to the play environment on a regular basis.

It would also providing Paizo with a new stream of revenue.

Play groups that don't want to spend the extra money, or who prefer to stick with the RAW, can simply ignore the cards-variant system.

(Much as some groups might, say, ignore a psionics variant...)

I know my group would love to be flipping cards on the table, adding immediacy and conflict to the spellcasting simulation.

--Capt Marsh

Another full house for this week's ROTRL campaign. A summoner, a fighter-thief, an inquisitor, a cleric, a magus, a gunslinger, and a barbarian.

The session was a bit lackluster, simply because I had a crusher work week and wasn't as well prepared as usual. Standard DM woes...

The players picked up some of the slack, doing a fun job of role-playing their efforts to build a full cargo for their trip upriver from Magnimar to Kaer Maga.

Their trade goods include everything from tobacco to alchemist's fire.

They also discovered that there was a sailor in Underbridge being held hostage by derro alchemists who had experience sailing through the dangerous waters near the Mushfen swamp.

They found him and broke him free -- after first battling against a group of mad derro and a queer interdimensional being.

Meanwhile, the magus purchased an ancient book in the Capital District which he was able to decipher.

It told of an ancient time when a runelord named Karzoug did battle against another runelord named Alaznist.

According to the text, Alaznist enlisted the aid of a demon goddess known as The Mother, while Karzoug secured allies from a dimension known as "Leng."

Reading the book with its strange and uncouth runes cost the magus two permanent points of Wisdom drain.

Next game, the groups sets off upriver with a hold full of trade goods -- destination Kaer Maga.

So after flushing the evil quasit Erylium out of the mysterious temple beneath Sandpoint, the party of adventurers known as the White Yeomen found that the local notables -- even those they trusted -- were eager to hush up the affair.

Letting on that Sandpoint has a goblin problem is one thing. Letting on that there may be an active cult to Lamashtu lurking about murdering people and covering noble folk in melted glass -- that's quite another.

So it was agreed that the Black Arrows would provide security for a while and the monks from Windsong Abbey would take on the task of locking down the underground temple, capping its entrances and keeping an eye on any mysterious activity.

Meanwhile, Shalelu Andosana would monitor activities at Thistletop, where the mysterious figure Nualia is believed to be hiding out with a group of goblin henchmen.

The White Yeomen would head off on a side-trek on behalf of Sandpoint's Mercantile League, working with officials in Magnimar to reopen the trade route via river to the city of Kaer Maga.

So..the group sets off by ship from Sandpoint to Magnimar and in the night is set upon by a mysterious faceless horror that grapples the summoner and flits up with him into the sky.

Using a magical tracking device provided to them by Judge Ironbriar, the group follows the summoner first to Magnimar and then into the slum of Underbridge. There they are ambushed by a group of queerly garbed men wearing hideous masks and wielding war razors.

These fiendish murderers keep muttering about the "Skinsaw man."

The group fights off the attackers and recovers the summoner, who was being held as bait. They discover that the summoner has a seven-pointed scar branded on his cheek.

After recovering a bit back at their ship, the group sets out for a night of revelry in Magnimar. One rogue matches wits with a Varisian card sharp, breaking even in a game of "Magnimar shuffle." A barbarian wrestles a hill giant on a bet -- and loses badly.

The magus, meanwhile, heads into the Capitol District and finds an arcane book store with a tome that appears to be a somewhat bastardized grammar of words made up of runes like the ones seen in the temple of Lamashtu and other sites around Sandpoint.

Next week, the adventure continues with the group selling some magical items, and buying trade goods for the journey by river to Kaer Maga. Their first challenge? Helping a group of troglodytes overcome a band of boggards, in exchange for free passage for Magnimarian traders passing near the Mushfens.

I've been running the hardcover reissue of Rise of the Rune Lords -- and it's been a fantastic ride.

One of the things I really took to heart was the advice in the new edition to slow the time frame down significantly and allow the PCs to sandbox Varisia.

That's worked out beautifully.

While working through the first section of the AP, I started buying Shattered Star and realized that this wasn't/isn't a campaign for my group.

Too many dungeon crawls. To be clear, they're GREAT dungeon crawls. But still, just not right for my group.

Also, we're not big fans of the "Pathfinder Society" as a plot motivator.

But what I've found is that there is a TON of great material in SS that really fleshes out the whole Thassilonian adventure.

Everything from monsters to settings to side trek adventures.

To cite just one example: My players are leaving Sandpoint for a time to lead a trading expedition from Magnimar to Kaer Maga.

SS has a huge amount of material to flesh out that journey. I plan to cannibalize big chunks of book one, Shards of Sin, including small chunks of the dungeon.

Also, one of my PCs is fascinated by the Sczarni -- and he's now bound up in side-plot involving the Tower Girls.

I also suspect that I'll trade out the long side mission in ROTRL to energize weapons -- and replace it with the cleaner quest mechanic of rebuilding the star.

(By the way, the first person who turns out to have a piece of the shattered star in my narrative is Aldern Foxglove - cursed with the pride sin...)

They'll use the star against Karzoug, and inadvertently trigger the apocalyptic events in Dead Heart of Xin.

By incorporating Shattered Star, I'll also be able to flesh out significantly the role of the Denizens of Leng, which is a very cool but underdeveloped aspect of ROTRL.

So...I'll let you know how it goes.

My guess is that by the end of January, we'll have finished most of the plot elements in Shards of Sin and Burnt Offerings.

--Marsh

I'm DMing the hardback version of ROTRL and it's going really well.

We have between 6 and 8 players at the table every week and the energy level is super. There was even some groaning about taking a week off for the holidays, which I took as a good sign.

But we've just come to the stretch of the first chapter where there are a lot of dungeon crawls -- first the dungeon under the glass factory and then Ripnugget's lair. And it already feels a little draggy.

The bottom line is that I feel like it's really hard for me to find ways to make the mechanics of room-clearing fresh and interesting. In a three-hour session, I find myself (as DM) sort of rushing guys through the combats, sausage-factory style.

I should point out that I already simplify most published dungeons A LOT. I leave in one or two empty rooms for guys to find, just so they don't think there's a monster in every room, and I focus as much as possible on rooms that have cool traps, puzzles, NPC encounters, etc.

I also work at creating interesting combats (3 dimensional battle areas, cleverly arrayed opponents, funky obstacles, etc.)

But even with this pared-down-souped-up approach, it just begins to drag.

So here's my appeal to those of you who love old-school D&D dungeon crawls. How do you make it fun? Not in the first encounter, but in the third or fourth?

I noticed that in the introduction to the first chapter of the Shattered Star AP, James Jacobs acknowledged that "exploring the depths of immense dungeons can get overwhelming -- especially if there's only one goal to achieve at the very end of the delve."

So maybe it's not just me?

Anyway, I'm open to any and all advice. I want the next few sessions to have a really fun, scary vibe...

Marsh

I've made comments to this effect in other places, and I'm sure this has been said before by other Pathfinder community members, but after getting an email yesterday from Ryan Dancey, I want to say a couple of things a bit more concretely.

I'm REALLY worried that Paizo is allowing this Online effort to distract the company from what it does well -- which is creating incredibly cool human-to-human games, primarily RPGs, and shepherding the latest, most popular incarnation of Dungeons and Dragons.

Over the decades, experienced gamers have watched again and again as the companies that shape our gaming world come into existence, prosper, lose their focus, and then collapse.

Let me say that I understand the temptation.

D&D -- under whatever name you market it -- has some limitations as a product that must be frustrating for a for-profit company. Growth is almost always desirable for companies like Paizo, and at this point I'm guessing Pathfinder is a fairly mature brand.

If I were Paizo, I'm not sure what I would do about that.

But I would urge real caution about getting distracted by an entirely new medium (MMOs) that requires huge time, talent, and money to tackle well.

Here are my particular worries:

1. Paizo will continue to urge their customers to invest in this speculative venture, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, without having full control over how that relationship develops in the future. There's already a lot of money on the line. If the MMO doesn't materialize, or if it sucks, Paizo will own a lot of the unhappiness that will follow.

2. Paizo will be drawn more and more into the MMO effort, meaning less and less bandwidth for creating the core products that have elevated Pathfinder to the top of the RPG industry. It doesn't take much to distract a small, talented management team from their core expertise and Paizo is already a pretty lean company.

This MMO enterprise comes at a time when Paizo is already venturing into a lot of different areas, from conventions to comic books. That's heady stuff -- and it may ultimately be good for the hobby.

But the history of companies like TSR and Wizards suggest that there's good reason for skepticism.

Finally, let me be clear that I write this out of pure fondness for Paizo and the creative work that's done by the company's writers, editors, and artistic directors. This is a GREAT gaming company. I want it to stay that way.

Capt. Marsh

I'm trying to make Windsong Abbey a more important location in my on-going campaign, and am developing the Masked Abbess as a significant patron/NPC. I understand that in the latest AP installment the Abbey is destroyed.

Is there any substantive material out there describing the Abbey BEFORE it's ruined? Or giving more detail about the Abbess. It's not really necessary that my own story-line be completely in sync with the setting as written, but I like to follow it as closely as possible.

Can anyone suggest any sources of info?

Capt. Marsh

I just launched a brand new campaign based closely around the new ROTRL hardcover. The idea is to run a very slow-paced, sand-boxy version of the adventure path, that will unfold over a number of years in in-game time and about 18 months of play-sessions.

Part 1: I really wanted to give the players a sense of entering a new land that they didn't know at all, so that the sense of discovering a fantastic and dangerous landscape could be a big element of the story.

So all the PCs were told that whatever their other background details, they were also members of a Chelish military order called the White Yeomen, which had just been purged and mostly exterminated by House Thrune.

They had to flee from Korvosa, where they had been traveling as messengers for the Yeoman.

Fortunately, an envoy of the Masked Abbess named Moonsail appeared and offered them an out. If they could escape over the rooftops to Korvosa's harbor, they would find a boat waiting to set sail for a region called the Lost Coast.

There followed a very fun rooftop chase scene (though it went on about 20% too long), made up of a combination of nervous skill checks (acrobatics, climb) and some cool off-balance combat.

The adversaries were a gang of Hellknight Armigers borrowed from the "Bastards of Erebus" book.

My group has agreed that this is supposed to be a highly lethal campaign -- and I would have had at least two character deaths except that a player misread a feature of his Summoner and played him WAY overpowered.

So the PCs all escaped aboard ship by the skin of their teeth.

Aboard ship, they had a chance to role-play with Moonsail, quizzing him about this new land they were entering. They also got to see the coast of Varisia, including Magnimar and Sandpoint, from the deck of the ship.

In part 2, they will meet the Masked Abbess, have early foreshadowy encounters with several important NPCs, and hopefully make it to Sandpoint.

In game time, it's still several weeks before the Swallowtail Festival...my goal is to give the players a lot of free rein to shape their PCs lives. The main ROTRL plot points will begin to pop up bit by bit...

Hi folks -

I'm doing a one-off megabattle with a group of experienced gamers. They're building 5 20th level heroes, I'm building a great wyrm red dragon, based on this design.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/dragons/dragon/chromatic- red/red-dragon-great-wyrm

My players are convinced this will be a pushover and I'll be honest: I'm not that experienced DMing high level encounters.

So first - any advice on making this critter as lethal as possible?

Also, one specific question:

Are there any magical items, or spells, that can be triggered to go off effectively if an enemy throws a time stop spell?

I know from their dark mutterings that repeated time stop bursts are a key to their strategy. And I've told them that the wyrm will be prepared for that kind of trick.

But I'm not sure the best counter...

Any tips?

--Captain Marsh

So I've been thinking a bit about the rehabilitation of Nicholas Logue in the gaming community and here are my two cents worth.

First, this isn't "Crime and Punishment." Logue's bungled business dealings are human, understandable.

Venal sins, not mortal ones.

In the grand scheme of things, all our lives have passed through similar twists and knots.

There is also a long tradition of great writers being terrible businessmen.

The guy who wrote Crime and Punishment? He made Logue's messy financial life look downright Horatio Alger-like.

But there is still something that Nicholas Logue needs to do to fully redeem himself in the gaming community.

(Again, I know this is small beer in the context of the guy's life, but it's a very big deal in the context of this collection of people.)

He needs to contribute. He needs to write some really great stuff. He needs to prove that he still matters and can push the form.

I happen to think Logue could actually do this.

I think we could see another adventure that really makes us all blink and think, "I didn't think D&D/Pathfinder could GO there..."

And I'm not just talking more violent, more Mammy Graul-style gothic. I mean, who knows what Logue might get up to?

So I'm hopeful. Really hopeful.

But until he produces actual work that is redemptive, the gaming community should keep it powder dry.

Asking for forgiveness, that's good. Paying the money back, better.

But getting back to work and writing something brilliant for the Pathfinder community -- that's the real catharsis for all involved.

--Captain Marsh

There is a sort of unceasing debate on the message boards here about myriad "broken" aspects of Pathfinder.

Classes are unbalanced at various levels. Abilities that are cool in the early game are irrelevant later. Some classes are particularly vulnerable and unfun in the early going.

Buried in all that complexity is the fact -- confirmed through countless hours of game-table play-testing -- that Pathfinder is actually a very nearly perfectly balanced, synchronized and ridiculously fun RPG through the middle levels.

If I were writing Pathfinder Next, I would essentially canonize the rules with PCs running from roughly 3rd through 12th level.

I would maintain a set of variant rules for "low magic" campaigns that include 1st and 2nd level options.

And I would include two high level variants, one for "superhero" play in the 12th-18th level range and another for "diety" style play in the 18th level and higher range.

This adjustment of the game's scope accomplishes a couple of things.

First, it brings the Pathfinder experience into the range of rules where everything works incredibly well.

You can play a rogue or a wizard or maybe even a bard and feel like you've got a vivid, balanced and effective range of powers and abilities.

Secondly, it focuses Pathfinder on what most genre fans think of as "real fantasy".

Characters much higher than 12th level have powers and abilities that just don't fit the feel of most fantasy narratives.

Obviously, anyone can just "house rule" this sort of change.

But if Paizo were to lead the charge it might also reshape things like the Adventure Paths.

It would be really cool to see what an AP story arc would look like that ran from 3rd through 12th levels.

PCs could really start with a bang -- no puttering around in the first couple of encounters -- and move more deliberately through the campaign.

(The leveling up sequence for this kind of AP would look something like this: Book 1 3-4, Book 2 5-6, Book 4 7-8, Book 5 9-10, Book 6 11-12)

I'll end with a question: How many playing groups actually spend much time playing in the levels that I'm spurning?

Would Pathfinder lose a lot of its interest if the range of play occurred between levels 3-12?

--Captain Marsh

Check out this video. Stay with it long enough for Jerry's discussion of the wall around Ukrania and the threatening void. Also, his deck of randomizing cards is a fascinating feature of this world.

www.theatlantic.com/video/index/245858/

Marsh

Slate, the on-line magazine, has kind of a cool -- if basic -- pictorial history of the use of monsters in ancient maps.

The story gets at one of the elements of fantasy that is often missing from RPG-play -- the sense of wonder, discovery and strangeness.

The fact that people literally didn't know where they were in the greater context of the world (and its natural laws) until the 18th century created a lot of the myth that underlies Pathfinder.

Find the Slate piece here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2304214/

--Marsh

I suppose this thread has already been bashed about somewhere out there, but if so I missed it -- and I keep finding myself thinking about this.

Would Golarion be more coherent, more narratively logical, and more fun as a setting that capped out at 10th or maybe 12th level?

You could still allow the worst/fiercest bad guys to have CR's sneaking up into the 14-15 category, so you wouldn't have to lose the archvillain vibe.

And you could still have some really ferocious beasties with even higher CRs that are best avoided -- demi-gods and the like that keep the background of plots and stories.

But a 10th level cap would avoid a lot of the awkward mechanics that begin to intrude at later levels of the game.

And they would avoid the issue of "fantasy" genre games morphing mid-stream into "superhero" genre adventures.

My take on this is admittedly subjective. I took up D&D again with 3.0 and have played consistently through 3.5 and PF.

Our gaming group has almost never risen beyond 12th level -- only one campaign took us into that territory and it wasn't very satisfying.

Generally we use the first several books of Adventure Paths and then create our own narrative ending after the second or third book...

Usually, that's about the length of our attention span for any one campaign anyway...so this would be another advantage.

APs would be two or three book arcs, rather than six book arcs.

How many people out there actually play regularly at levels 10+?

--Marsh

I'm not sure the 'advice' board is the place to put this note, but I've been feeling strongly about this for a while.

I'd like to encourage people who use Paizo's message-boards to stop shutting down (or trying to shut down) other people's threads.

Yes, I know some of the things raised here have been discussed before, sometimes repeatedly.

And offering a link to past conversations is helpful and cool.

But a lot of us who love Pathfinder don't have the time or desire to spend kajillions of hours monitoring the boards all the time.

We come here for conversation about our favorite game, not to be lectured or told that we've already missed the boat.

If someone raises a topic that you personally find uninteresting or silly or repetitive whatever, just move on. Don't participate.

There's no need to drop the snark on other people's discussions...

Finally, if someone's saying something superficial or newby-esque, that often means they're new.

Welcome them. Be friendly. They might wind up being the next person at your gaming table...

--Marsh

:::NOTE: SPOILERS GALORE::::

I generally rave about Paizo's adventures, particularly their Adventure Path stuff -- which by definition has a bigger scope, more story structure, and is well thought out.

I also think of Paizo's work as sort of redefining what D&D can and should be.

The narrative approaches are more complex, more innovative, and just plain more fun than anything Wizards approached during the 3.0 and 3.5 era.

Which is why I want to share some thoughts about the Carrion Crown Adventure Path.

First, there are some very cool elements here. Harrowstone and the Beast had some compelling bits: the Splatterman, Vorkstag and Grine, the Beast itself -- all really cool.

In our game, I had one player in particular -- a fifteen year old guy -- who was really moved by the beast's plight.

And later on, some of the individual Lovecraftian elements are cool. Nice, for example, to have the Mi-Go statted out and ready to go.

But this is also the first AP where I -- and my players -- found ourselves stumbling against quite a lot of other stuff that just seemed broken and kind of incoherent.

Bluntly, it felt like the entire AP was too much of a hodgepodge (werewolves, Frankenstein, vampires and Lovecraft?), one that the Paizo folks just couldn't quite wrangle together.

It also felt at times as if the whole thing needed one more big edit, the kind that aims at coherence and narrative, not just tidy stat blocks.

One example is that in the first two installments, the writers introduce three potential villains (Splatterman, Vorkstag, Grine) who are far more colorful and interesting than anything the Whispering Way has to offer.

Adventures need villains. And in this adventure path, the most compelling villains aren't THE villains.

That's confusing and disappointing.

There were also some weird head-fakes. The Beast starts off with a battle with a really cool and nasty phase spider that is abducting a child.

So when the party starts trying to solve the mystery of a bunch of dead children in a nearby village, it's hard not to blame them for thinking along the same lines...

Another, bigger (and more broken) example is in the Wake of the Watcher. This isn't just a case of missed opportunities or small head-fakes.

It's a case of stuff just not making any sense.

In theory, the players are chasing after Dark Riders who are part of one deadly cult, the Whispering Way.

They then stumble into a feud between two other deadly cults (Dagon and mutant skum in this corner, the Mi-Go and Shub-Niggurath in the other corner).

That's just too many plotlines, too many confusing end-of-the-world scenarios -- and, really, the Whispering Way seems pretty damn tame compared to the Mi-Go menace.

Finally (and I know this will sound a little like self-puffery), I found that it was pretty easy to clean up these adventures and make them much more coherent with one thorough edit.

If I had been in the editing room at Paizo, I would have said, "These elements and characters are great. Expand them and connect them in ways that make a little more sense. These other elements are just a muddle. Cut them."

Which suggests to me that Paizo may be moving a little too fast, throwing out a little too much product that needs one more tough rewrite.

I know, I know -- even without that, Paizo's stuff is good. It's full of cool, surprising, and sometimes big ideas. (Structuring the Beast story as a courtroom drama? That's neat.)

But I want Paizo's storytelling to be great. And I know that they can put these elements together in ways that are better and smarter and funner...

--Captain Marsh

One of my big regrets in the post D&D 3.0 era is that I didn't buy the Ptolus setting when it came out.

Has anyone heard any rumblings that it might be revamped and reissued in a form compatible with PF?

Seems like there would be a big audience out there.

-- Marsh

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the logical inconsistencies in the various descriptions of Ustalav.

I should say as an aside that I understand that Golarion is a setting for an RPG -- and a brilliant setting at that.

This kind of conversation about "realism" in imagined worlds isn't a criticism; I just find it sort of interesting.

In fact, I tried once to DM a fantasy game that was meticulously realistic.

I worked to portray the experience of being in an underground dungeon -- the darkness, the constant mundane hazards -- and it was really boring.

(Characters fell down and bumped into things a lot...)

But I thought I'd see if there was interest a conversation about what a "real" world might be like if it functioned according to the 'natural laws' as described in Pathfinder.

What would life be like for an average person? Would wizards rule everything?

What would it mean in a society if a small minority of people lived twice or three times as long as everyone else?

It would also be interesting to confront sort of head-on the stipulated 19th-century Tolkien-esque racism inherent in the system.

(I don't raise this last bit to be confrontational or judgmental. I LOVE Pathfinder and I regularly put my players in the position of killing "orc savages" just like everyone else...)

And what about the ramifications of a clear existence of "good" people and "evil" people?

What would a legal system look like in a world where people could be tested for their true "alignment"?

What would the penalties be for using enslaving spells such as Charm Person?

So...let me kick-start the discussion with one fundamental question that might shape an understanding of a "realistic" Pathfinder world.

Why don't more people use magic?

Why don't average commoners learn at least one or two cantrips to help with their basic lives?

Is intelligence (or wisdom) the only limitation, or do most people simply lack the talent -- or whatever -- to use magic?

If so, why aren't those blessed with magical inspiration (arcane or divine) drawn into an immediate elite?

How could a merchant or a craftsman (or a priest, for that matter) possibly compete without access to a few basic practical spells?

(Again, I get that none of this will necessarily enhance anyone's game. World-building interests me, however, and that's the conversation I'm nudging for...)

--Marsh?

So here's the deal. I'm running the Carrion Crown AP and it's going well.

There have been a few authentically creepy moments, and some otherwise just fun adventure...

My wrinkle is this: I have two players running PCs that just jar my gothic-horror sensibilities.

Both are GREAT players, by the way, and not disruptive or deliberately weird. They're just following their tastes and I don't like it.

One is running an eleven-year-old girl character. Sort of modeled on Lyra from the Golden Compass books.

The wrinkle here is that for meta reasons he armed her with a throwing axe -- which at her size she has to wield two-handed.

I asked if he meant to create a Lizzie Borden type vibe, but not. He just wants that weapon for its statted values.

The other player is even more jarring (to my tastes). He's playing a cleric, who for the most part has a very nice slightly mad friar feel.

(He's a Pharasma cleric with the heresy trait.)

But he has insisted on having the character's holy magic weapon -- the one that appears and floats around -- be a broken beer bottle.

Normally this kind of humor doesn't bug me. But Ustalav is so gothic that it borders on camp and I don't want that vibe taking over...

So what do you think? Am I being too controlling and Type A? Or should I do a DM intervention?

(The solution I have in mind is to bribe the girl character with a masterwork sword cane type walking stick to replace her axe, and to simply force the cleric to choose a different weapon...)

Advice welcome...

Marsh

So first the good news: Ustalav is the gothic, creepy, haunted realm that finally won me over to Golarion.

The writing in the Carrion Crown AP, and in the "Rule of Fear" campaign setting guide is brilliant.

As an adventure setting, it's awesome, jammed with threads and texture.

But I'm also a big fan of coherent "world building" in fantasy, and I'm wondering if Ustalav makes any sense at all.

Ustalav sits "beyond the frontier" lying to the north of the kingdom of "Lastwall."

It lies in a hammer-anvil vice between an orc horde (Belkzen), a world-threatening demonic invasion (the Worldwound) and a barbarian realm empowered by alien science (Numeria).

Throw in the fact that Ustalav is the burial place of Golarion's restless dark lord, and is plagued by remnant populations of werewolves and vampires.

Unlike other nations in Golarion (Lastwall being the best example) Ustalav appears to lack any sort of ability to resist these threats.

It is a decadent, splintered, squabbling society, given over in large part to academic disputes, mystical dreams, and conspiracy theories.

(Spoiler alert) According to AP 44, even the Order of the Palatine Eye are in large measure mystical dilletantes and disorganized dabblers.

According to "Rule of Fear," the former defenses against Belkzen -- primarily the Bleakwall -- are in shambles.

Lepidstadt, which sits on an incredibly dangerous frontier, doesn't even have a complete city wall, or any obvious means of defense.

I get that part of this is nitpicking on my part.

It reflects the difficulty of balancing fantasy world building against the need for multiple adventure hooks...

And really? Could a civilization exist with so many runelords and earthfalls and lich kings shouldering their way to the front of the line?

Probably not.

But as a sop to my own sensibilities, I'm adding a new "Conspiracy" to my house-ruled "Rule of Fear" text:

The Royal Bounders
Royalists who guard Ustalav's frontier

Alignment LN
Headquarters Castle Andachi
Leader: First Captain Petra Marelk

The Bounders were founded in 3860, largely in response to orc raids along Ustalav's western frontier. They are fiercely nationalist, drawing on the symbolism of the lost Kingdom of Ustalav.

While many of the Bounders' captains are noble, they reject the legitimacy of Prince Aduard III, insisting that an heir to the last King Adurras will eventually be found.

They are also fiercely hostile to the democratic sympathies of the Palatinate counties.

While given over to endless debates about ancient historical events and embittered by what they see as the betrayal of Ustalav by the Shining Crusade, the Bounders are also a highly effective irregular military force.

They also have the fierce loyalty and respect of the commoners, who see them as nearly saint-like defenders.

Operating largely in secret, the Bounders maintain twelve independent "patrols" in northern and western Ustalav.

These patrols -- each with between 50 and 100 rangers and warriors -- shift and move depending on circumstances. They work in concert only when required.

The Bounders also spend a significant amount of their time recruiting and training local militias, known as "scythers" because of their primitive weaponry.

Once each year, the captains of the different patrols gather to meet in the ruins of Castle Andachi, which is a symbol of their deperate fight to hold Ustalav in trust until the true King returns.

### ###

I'm preparing to run Harrowstone and I think I have my players properly psyched to try the 'horror-gothic' thing.

We're really looking forward to it.

But I'll be honest, I'm struggling a little bit with the opening chapters of the story.

In theory, there are a lot of things going bump in the night and weird locals painting bloody letters on walls.

It's great writing, great texture, great mood-setting.

But isn't it sort of obvious that the source of all this creepiness is that big haunted prison in the hill?

You know, the one where the Professor died? The one hinted at in all the various rumors and described explicitly in the Professor's diary?

I'm guessing that the first thing my players will say is, 'Harrowstone, here we come!"

But the adventure states explicitly that the players should be herded away from Harrowstone until they're second level (good advice, given the nasties up there...)

And I don't want them to miss the cool stuff that comes earlier.

One possibility would be to suggest that they need to learn something about Harrowstone before venturing in.

But reading the Knowledge checks and so forth, I can't see anything here that will really advantage the party if they learn it.

There aren't any weaknesses disclosed for the Five Prisoners. that I can see.

We don't learn anything that will inspire the PCs to partner better with Vesorianna. (Unless I'm missing something...)

Anyone else dealt with this? Anyone come up with a way to shepherd characters away from the final confrontation that isn't blatantly meta?

It's already just a bit weird that I'm urging my players to hang around Ravengro for a month with these dangerous books they're supposed to deliver, so I'd prefer not to be too obvious with my story-telling...

Advice welcome...

Captain Marsh

I've been DMing a long time and I love the Pathfinder rules.

My group has been playing an on-going campaign (first under 3.5 and then with PF) for two years.

I make heavy use of rewritten Paizo adventures, which I find to be beautifully written and well plotted.

So here's my question: Do other groups actually play through all the encounters and fights in these "modules"?

I generally find that most encounters take a fairly long time.

So if we try to dungeon crawl through, say, six or seven major encounters in a single dungeon, the story slows to, well, a crawl.

Generally, I've been rewriting these so that in each new setting there is one light or quick encounter and one go-big clash with all the bells and whistles.

Then it's on to the next venue, the next plot point, the next setting.

My approach generally matches that of the Indiana Jones or Star Wars movies, where each exotic locale is the set piece for one big fun clash.

So what are others doing? Are you really slogging through one monster-packed room after another?

And if so, how are you getting all that combat done without spending days and days of play time?

(Maybe I'm not running my combats quickly or efficiently enough?)

--Marsh

So I've just launched the Kingmaker campaign (I've adapted the setting to Eberron's Breland-Droaam frontier) and have a couple of reactions.

First, it flows really well and for the most part my players took well the sandbox idea.

They also took heartily to the idea of exploration, with the idea of mapping out their future kingdom.

(I fleshed out the exploration rules significantly, adding in more natural threats and expanding the opportunity to find natural resources. I wanted sort of a Civilization IV quality to this phase of the game.)

One wrinkle is that I've been urging the players to think a little more 'realistically' about consolidating their gains.

For example, using their skills and abilities to fortify Oleg's outpost; and training their horses into war-ready mounts -- that kind of up front investment that might give them advantages later.

I'm trying to get them on a track to think of their characters less as marauders or itinerant heroes and more as people who are taking ownership.

I plan to handle most of the mechanics of that stuff away from the game table, through PBEM and other mechanisms, so that our actual face-to-face game time can be more dynamic.

One cool dimension is that a couple of the players have begun to think in detail about ways they can simply co-opt the Stag Lord and the bandits, avoiding direct confrontation.

Can he (or one of his henchmen) be bribed? Can he be enlisted as a member of their party? can his forces be enlisted as mercenaries?

I'm trying to keep an open mind about all this.

Bottom line: very cool.

Marsh

I know RPGs and traditional wargames are very different animals, with different audiences.

But I for one would love to have a full-blown tactical-level set of rules for large-unit combat that integrates with Pathfinder.

The current Kingmaker adventure path hints at just how fun a game could be where players can enjoy a really wide ranging game.

To meet my needs, a game would have to contain most of the following:

-A streamlined way that PCs can affect large-scale tactical combat.
-A political component, so that Leadership, Diplomacy and other non-combat elements of Pathfinder can affect outcomes.
-Full integration with the Pathfinder game system, so that races and monsters in the RPG translate smoothly to the WG.
-Clear rules for how monsters and magic-wielders can function as artillery, air support, etc.
-A coherent vision for how war would function in a setting with magic and monsters.

To be clear, I'm not interested in skirmish rules.

I would argue that the standard unit size for the game would be 20 medium-sized creatures per counter or miniature.

Hex scale would be approximately 50'.

That strikes me as an approach that would allow for a wide range of scenarios -- from small border skirmishes (3-4 counters on each side) to fairly epic LOTR-scale battles (20-30 counters on each side).

--Captain Marsh

Hi folks -

We're starting a new campaign with a new set of characters and abilities, and we have some questions.

1. Are summoned creatures affected by a bard's buffing abilities?
1b. I'm assuming most direct buffing spells (haste, stoneskin, etc.) can be cast on a summoned creature?
2. Is activating a wand complex enough to interrupt a bardic performance?
3. Is a summoning interrupted or disrupted if the spellcaster/conjuror teleports briefly (dimension door)?

-Marsh