Captain Phoenix's page

Writer's Group: Is there a writer's group set up for the fiction submission? If not, I'd be happy to set one up on Discord or via e-mail if that suits more people.

Also, if you've had fiction accepted for Wayfinder before and have any suggestions, we'd love to hear them.

Regarding Grammarly: We (at several companies involved with polishing English) use it all the time, in addition to other spell checkers. It doesn't get everything right all the time, but I think of it like another seive used for straining out imperfections. Get someone else to check your work too.

Monster Template: I have this monster template in Word, which I think Timitius sent me last year.

Our first Pathfinder Second Edition book is here, giving you the Aasimar and Tiefling Ancestries, playable right now.

The book is a 40 page bookmarked PDF, which includes aasimar and tiefling heritages, ancestry feats, and random racial features for each ancestry.

The book is written by Kim Frandsen (Pathfinder Player Companion: Wilderness Origins), with art and layout by Bob Greyvenstein.

I'm always interested in adventures with gimmicks such as solo/1 player. I'll check out your site.

P2 should still be one of the more friendly systems to publish 3PP, but guess this is extremely early still.

Thanks ChibiNyan.

Yeah, Paizo has always been good to its 3PPs, and I doubt this will change with 2nd ed.

We at Rising Phoenix Games are considering releasing Pathfinder 2 compatible versions of our most popular products, including Welcome to Scarthey and our fifth edition OGL compatible solo adventures.

At this stage, we're not sure when third-party publishers will have access to the rules, but if Pathfinder 1 and Starfinder is anything to go by, we should be able to consider a launch date that coincides with the launch of Pathfinder 2.

First review 5 stars?! Hooray!

Nicely done!

All of our Pathfinder and Starfinder products are on sale this week on Drive Thru RPG, including all our Field Guides packed full of monsters and our fan-favorite, Welcome to Scarthey.

Get Them Here

Well done Bardess!!!

Will we get the now obligatory breakdown of tentacle monster submissions?

I now want to play a

"We be goblins...IN SPACE!"

This!!! So much this!!!

Suggested title "We Be Goblins 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - Blast Off"

Rising Phoenix Games is looking for a line developer / writer / game designer to join our team and take our Starfinder line to the stars and beyond.

Responsibilities

• Develop compelling Starfinder Roleplaying Game compatible supplements.
  
• Maintain the high quality of our products, including adhering to house and industry style guides.
  
• Help maintain a visible and accessible web presence, including blogging and interacting with interest groups on Facebook, Google+, and elsewhere.
  
• Coordinating with play testers and the Rising Phoenix Games team.
  
• Conduct market research (i.e.: play and read lots of Starfinder)
  

Requirements

• A minimum of 2 years’ experience working within the industry creating content for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.
  
• A passion for creating amazing content, writing well, designing accessible mechanics, and inspiring great journeys of the imagination in others.
  
• A positive and self-driven attitude with the ability to collaborate in a team environment.
  
• Excellent knowledge of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game. You should be actively running your own campaign.
  
• Strong written and verbal communications skills. You habitually note spelling and grammar errors in anything you read, swearing to exact vengeance for all slights against the English language.
  

Bonuses

• A stable day job and plenty of free time to write.
  
• Available between 8:30 am and 3 pm, South African Standard Time.
  
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
  
• Creative writing background.
  
• Deep knowledge and passion for mecha related franchises.
  

Required Application Materials

• Resume
  
• Cover letter including your sci-fi related gaming experience.
  
• A 1st level human Starfinder character. The character should be your closest approximation of a mecha crewman (do indicate what sort of role the character usually fills). Format the character as a stat block (no character sheets please).
  
• All application material should be in .PDF format and include your name and email address.
  
• Submit application material to contact@risingphoenixgames.com
  

Don't forget Shadows over Vathak either, our sister setting already in publication on DriveThruRPG & on Paizo, and on the shared world of Antikthon!

We actually put out a basic primer on playing Vathak races in Steampunk Musha: here, here, and here.

And thanks Endz, you made my day :-)

Konnichiwa traveler.

Rosuto-Shima, a place torn between honoring the old traditions and embracing the new, onrushing age of steam.

Take up your katana and enter the world of Steampunk Musha, an East Asian inspired Steampunk setting for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

The release of the first book, Steampunk Musha - Explorer's Guide to Rosuto-Shima, is drawing nearer. If you haven't heard about the world we're creating yet, you can find out more here:

Steampunk Musha Official Blog
Steampunk Musha Facebook Page
Steampunk Musha on Google Plus
Fat Goblin Games on Twitter

Our bi-weekly dev blog has plenty of spoilers and some tantalizing flash fiction.

• Episode 1 - Kicking things off.
  
• Episode 2 - Serbian Irish Bands! No, really!
  
• Episode 3 - More about Serbian Irish Bands?!
  
• Episode 4 - More about the Explorer's Guide.
  
• Episode 5 - Some inspiration.
  
• Episode 6 - A sneak peek.
  
• Episode 7 - Why Pathfinder?
  
• Episode 8 - Sticking it to the man.
  
• Episode 9 - Outsiders
  
• Episode 10 - Quick and Dirty Steampunk Weaponry
  
• Episode 11 - Gaijin.
  
• Episode 12 - More gaijin.
  
• Episode 13 - Even more gaijin.
  
• Episode 14 - Collects the Shattered Vows flash fiction.
  
• Episode 15 - Don't trust cats.
  

I'll be posting updates here, so watch this space!

Rising Phoenix Games is looking for freelance writers.
Project Length: 3,750 words
Pay Rate: A 25% cut of sales.
Additional details: Rising Phoenix Games is looking for writers to produce solo and 1-on-1, choose-your-own-adventure style adventures for the Dungeons & Dragons 5e ruleset. Excellent examples can be found in the D&D 4e Beginners Box and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Beginners Box. The adventure should be tailored to a Cleric or Fighter of level 1 to 3 and should scale appropriately. Familiarity with Twine is recommended, but not essential.
750 words of the project are reserved for extending the adventure (such as adding random encounter tables, or modifying the game if played at night, etc).
Please send a 200~300 word pitch and a writing sample to the email address below.
We are looking for 3 writers for this assignment.
Respond to: contact@risingphoenixgames.com
Respond by: February 17th, 2017
Assignment Deadline: To be discussed. We'd like to release 1 adventure every 2 months beginning early April.

Isabelle Lee wrote:

Captain Phoenix wrote:

I've got a story idea featuring ghouls and was wondering if any of the APs would be a good fit?

Maybe Mummy's Mask? Or possibly Strange Aeons - Lovecraft made significant use of ghouls in his stories, so you might be able to justify the link. ^_^

Maybe they're advanced scouts for whatever happens when those Osirian countdown clocks strike zero? Maybe they're some other faction/power attempting to exploit the convergence/event?

Thanks Ambrosia and Isabelle, "Empty Graves" from Mummy's Mask provided an excellent fit for what I was looking for. Wish me luck :)

Happy holidays Pathfinder friends, and a very Merry Christmas from us at Rising Phoenix Games. To celebrate the festive season, we've published a Free Field Guide on Drive Thru RPG. You can download your copy here.

Never leave the tavern without a good guide.

Wicked wings descend like darkened death from above. When the baleful strix marks you as his target, there's nowhere left to run.

Baleful Strix—A Free Field Guide is a richly illustrated and comprehensive set of field notes dealing with a rare and deadly race of fiendish hunters.
Inside this beautiful book you'll find full stats for the baleful strix and comprehensive coverage of their wicked customs and social structure.

Now's also a good time to mention that we're also running a contest on our blog. Yay! More free books!

Never leave the tavern without a good guide!

With feathers aflame, the majestic phoenix rises from the ashes, a symbol of hope to the broken, driving fear into the hearts of the wicked.

Phoenixes—A Field Guide is a richly illustrated and comprehensive set of field notes dealing with phoenixes and phoenix ecology. The book includes 7 phoenix subspecies, the phoenix guardian monk archetype and the Order of the Phoenix cavalier order.

Now on Drive Thru RPG

That's an impressive bundle of books! I love that you don't have to pay for the books you already have!

Rising Phoenix Games is hosting May's RPG Blog Carnival. The theme for May is "At World's End", and you can find the introductory post at risingphoenixgames.com/blog/at-worlds-end/

I realize this is a slightly different post from what you usually find here, but I'd especially love to see Pathfinder Third Party Publishers and Designers/Writers/Artists/Cartographers represented, especially because 'tis the season of Paizo Con.

If you're a blogless writer who wants to participate, send me a PM and we'll see what we can do.

Enjoy the Apocalypse.

Yay, my first Wayfinder story is away. A big thank you to Curaigh, Kalindlara and the ever amazing Dame Ezmé for their keen eyes and useful feedback. The River Kingdoms are a safer place for your efforts.

And Merry Christmas everyone (only 7 hours to go in this part of the world).

I'm building a level 7 Pathfinder necromancer. The GM says any Paizo hardcover is allowed. I want to min max him for animate dead, so I can have a legion of undead soldiers.

Any good ideas regarding feats? Since I only get Animate Dead at level 7, I don't think a metamagic feat will help much until later. I could multiclass to get desecrate, but then I loose animate dead... what's a necromancer to do?

{desperately attempts to lift Mew-Mew the Banhammer, Smasher of the Spamheim... fails} Still... not... worthy...

LOLZ.

I flagged several.

Certainly many of you have more experience than I do, but I do think that design, by definition, is an iterative process that requires “feedback”. That feedback takes many forms, such as testing, gathering of opinions and research, which is fed back into the design. Managing this feedback effectively, while maintaining their “personal voice”, is a critical skill for a good designer. After all, we’re not designing in a vacuum; we’re designing for an audience whose opinion is important.

Feedback is already such an integral part of the contest; RPG SS would be nothing without the judges giving their feedback after each round. If feedback is really hurting the process, the contest or masking the true ability of the contestants, then that’s going to come to light at some point. Rather, I think that whatever feedback contestants are receiving from their pit-crews they’re assimilating and it’s making them better designers overall.

I know there are a bunch of people playing 1-on-1 campaigns, and I'd love to hear about your experiences. What worked, what didn't, what would you try differently?

My wife and I started our 1-on-1 campaign yesterday. Honestly, we’ve been talking about playing for ages, but things finally fell into place. I knew I didn’t want to go rules heavy, even though my wife is an experienced player (her PFS character is at least a level above mine). So, for our first session, we didn’t even touch the dice. I’m hoping this also means we can quickly pick up the game at any time, just using the apps I have on my phone.

We started out with a Q&A. What did her character do? Did she have any family? How old was she? What was she good at, what was she bad at? Did she have friends? What about enemies? This built up the backstory, but it also helped us stat up her character. Taking a huge departure from the norm, we decided I’d keep her character sheet; she’d be playing blind, according to what she thought her character was good at, not what’s on the paper.

The questions quickly developed into a story. When my wife couldn’t quite decide on a name for her character, I said “Well, that’s because the day of your naming quest is fast approaching, upon which your name shall be decided.” Spiced with the sudden revelation of an unknown sister who had vanished during her own naming quest and the guilt of parents who had kept this a secret for so long and BANG, we had several plot hooks.

NPCs and pivotal monsters were also developed in the same way, all becoming firmly linked to the characters life and the story we’re telling.

It also rescued “mistakes”. At one point I introduced a character, Rujio, who it was later discovered would be taking his naming quest on the same day as my wife’s character.
“But if he’s taking the naming quest, why does he have a name?”
“Well, um? Drat!”
But we turned it into a big part of the story. Rujio was an upstart, a nonconformist who was a load of trouble; he’d even given himself a name, a practice unheard of in society.

This process made the whole game much more collaborative, so we’re both deeply invested in it after only a few hours of what was essentially character creation.

Thanks Kalindlara and Paris, that makes a whole lot of sense. Looking forward to sending in my submissions.

You have a phoenix lily!

...so I had to submit a pitch.

My two cents...

The rajah is a powerful man, and he'd be concerned for his personal safety. I'd expect to see some secret escape route, as well as his apartments and that of his harem or treasure room. I think you could still maintain this grand open balcony with it half the current size, and include all these details too. A map like that would get a load of use from my group, who recently took on a rakshasa in a similar setting. Heck, I know it would be the map I’d go to for every king, wizard-prince or similarly powerful NPC the party comes up against.

Ghostly Tome

You're too kind.

There were a bunch of items on my keep list, they were (in alphabetical order):

• Book of Remembered Locations
  
• Compass of Distorted Geometry
  
• Canvas of the Dreamer
  
• Disks of the Solar Eclipse
  
• Ebon Fury
  
• Earthbind Manacles
  
• Fray’s Fabulous Fireworks
  
• Glove of the Severed Servant
  
• Gown of Many Graves
  
• Green Canary
  
• Hide of the Hagfish
  
• Lodestone Plate
  
• Phantom Corsair Boots
  
• Phase Strike Lenses
  
• Primordial Fang
  
• Psalter of Devotion
  
• Rat-Scratch Cane
  
• Sage’s Arquebus
  
• Spirit-Catcher
  
• Starsling Buckler
  
• Watch of Borrowed Time
  

Hide of the Hagfish and Gown of Many Graves are two of my favorite items of all time, it's easy to see why they got into the top lot.

Me, the foreigner, sitting in an office surrounded by Japanese co-workers (loudly): "Yes."
Co-workers: politely continuing as if nothing happened.

Thanks for that feedback, Captain Phoenix (and Brigg and Dieben too; sorry for neglecting you earlier). I do sympathise that the name was maybe off-putting, but as I mentioned in my own critique, I thought that the fun factor was better than a more conventional name.

Thanks for your votes, and helping me pass all the culls!

No problem. Looking at my comment again I felt the need to clarify, so here goes:

I think that, if you went the other way, making the name more fun, you would have really shone. By this I mean a name where people are like: "woah, this YYY is a security blanket" rather than "this Security Blanket's a security blanket". I can't for the life of me think of what name would really work though.

Also, thou shalt not...

So that's why Kung Fury happened!

Ghostly Tome
Aura faint necromancy; CL 5th
Slot none; Price 40,000 gp; Weight 3 lbs.
Description
Strewn with cobwebs, this pale tome appears to fade from view when moved into shadow.

When preparing spells, an arcane spellcaster may choose to inscribe up to five of her spells within the ghostly tome, paying the material cost of each spell as required. Spells inscribed in this way count towards her daily allotment of spells. Spells cast from the ghostly tome which target incorporeal creatures do not suffer the usual 50% penalty for affecting an incorporeal creature. Spells cast from the ghostly tome affect corporeal creatures normally.

Once cast, the spell's inscription fades from the book’s pages, becoming illegible. A new spell may be inscribed when the character has free spell slots available.

Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, Craft (books), Empower Spell, imbue with spell ability; Cost 20,000 gp

I'd love any feedback you have to offer.
edit: I believe I survived all the culls, if anyone knows otherwise, I'd love to know too.

When in doubt, make it awesome.

... I'd like that new edition to look a lot more like the Beginner Box than the Core currently does.

I'd love to see more support for the Beginners Box, although I've hardly exhausted what's already available. It’s such a great product.

As for a new version? Well, there are some great systems out there that are "New" but died too soon (like Marvel Heroic Roleplaying). As many people have said, Pathfinder is well supported. Taking into account what it would take to support a new rule set and keep the old one, I think Paizo would come up against similar opinions to what WotC did with 4th Edition. It seems to me that role-players are generally averse to change too.

So, while there are surely loads of good reasons to update Pathfinder, I really hope the current system lives on for a very, very long time.

Every review helps, thanks everyone. [thumbs up]

As a relatively new player in the game, I found that I learn loads from reviews. Even a short review is worth more than no review at all.

Thanks R Pickard and Anthony, it all makes a lot of sense. Incidentally, we used the Oxford style guide at our University. I believe it's particularly for academic texts.

Wikipedia has a list of style guides here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Style_guides, if anyone is interested.

This is what I love about RPG Superstar. It's like a free course in game design for aspiring game designers.

I really hope I can take all the lessons to heart, come back next year and get into the coveted top 32.

Thanks @Mikko

Congratulations Monica!

I've been enjoying your posts on the forum, you've been a great guide to the RPG Superstar contest and I'm glad you made it through to round 2. Good luck!

I'm a first timer.
I missed the call for entries for RPGSS '13 and RPGSS '14, but I'm very glad that I heard the call and submitted this year.
Just entering has been awesome. I've gotten to know the community much better, found great advice and had a blast.

I've entered a couple of RPG related contests over the years, but this is the biggest and the best, IMHO.

Now, will someone please shoot me a message when RPGSS '16 opens up ;-)

Captain Phoenix wrote:

As for availability, the books can be bought off Amazon.co.jp or at Yellow Submarine, which has branches throughout the country. You can also order books through any good book store, which is how I got my Bestiary 3.

Sugeeee! I know Yellow Submarine -- I visit the store every time I go to Tokyo! I didn't know they had branches in other cities, too. It'd be pretty damn awesome to play Pathfinder Society the next time I'm in Tokyo if there is a local group there...

:-)

You're welcome to make the 2 hour train ride out to come play with us.

I know of Yellow Submarine in Shinjuku, Akihabara and Hiroshima. There's one in Kyoto too. But they might not all sell Pathfinder. Akihabara has the best collection I've seen in Japan so far.

I really enjoyed entering and I'm loving voting. This is my first year, so I can't compare it to others, but having a blast. Also, I'm really enjoying seeing so many ideas in one place, it's quite inspiring.

Well this is fun. I've seen plenty of great things and got to vote on a few great items twice.

Starting to think necromancy is a major theme this year.

This is not a complaint, however there seems to be nothing for the "2" in "2-5"

As in 1 player and a GM.

Glad you asked. I recently wrote a solo adventure that you could run as a GM for a single player (that's how I've tested much of it, besides also soloing it myself). It's free and you can grab some printable maps too:

Sentinels Watching

If you need more help let me know. I wrote this because I want to play more sessions with my wife or with friends if the rest of the group can't meet, so I feel your pain.