CastleDour's page

yeah... i want more stories where Nocticula, Arazni, Shoshen, etc. are the main villains that we destroy in the adventure path. not a fan of redemption for demon lords, lich queens and evil runelords.

i am not a fan of the new rewards, gold, or incentives, i see it as a way to extract maximum profit and am turned off by it. the old subscription lines was better. i just wont want to buy anything if i feel like im being pressured to buy more or nothing at all rather than at my own pace.

I always buy the PDF first and if I like it, I buy the foundry code. This has been a great way for me to support Paizo on my budget and being outside the US.

since i dont live in the US, i can only hope there is no bad incident involving the police in the country so Agents of Edgewatch can get the treatment it deserves, it truly is underrated and harshly perceived due to the theme, and I'd love a foundry VTT module for it. watching roll for combat play through the entire campaign is a joy.

Hoping for Hellknights or Old Cheliax soon!

Not only do the shorter ones sell better (in large part because there's twice as many opportunities to "get in on the ground floor" of the story), but they give customers twice as many opportuniteis to get excited about an Adventure Path (since we do four a year instead of two). The amount of time it takes the typical group to play through a 3 parter is generally more than 3 months, so by the time they're wrapping up, there's even MORE choices of where to go from there.

Also, while I do understand folks wanna play a pC from 1st to 20th level (that's my preferred method of play), many MORE folks are eager to always be building new PCs to try out new character concepts, in part because we continue to publish so many interesting and intriguing new options for new characters (ancestries in particular are VERY popular, and you can't easily switch your ancestry over on an established character). More opportunities to start a new campaign plays better into that sort of player mindset, I suspect.

For the time being, 3 part Adventure Paths are here to stay, in other words.

just kickstarter a 1-20 level campaign outside the 4 you are already doing when you are fully staffed up and release it in 2 or 3 years :) or contract it out to mark seifer and linda while granting them license to your full IP :P

Battle of the bears.

Lost Omens Hellknights seems closer now, exciting!

The problem with art is I don't like having iconics in them. They now all have their own personalities, novels, biographies and history, and it's harder for players to replace them. Just show me the city, temple, monster, whatever. I don't need to see iconics in every image. That's the good thing about Lost Omens.

id prefer age of ashes or agents of edgewatch, SoG is really good as is

This is an interesting point. Do folks WANT us to provide maps for areas of importance where no combat or no tactical stuff plays out? I do love maps, but... they're the most complicated part of an adventure to create (since the authors we hire are generally experts at writing... not always at cartography, so that means that for a LOT of advnentures the developer ends up having to create the map turnovers themselves to send to the professional cartographer to do). The balance of text space to map space is also complicated, since adding maps not only takes up space text could have taken up, but often requires more text to contextualize the additional maps.

And they cost more; the more maps we put in, the less budget we have per volume for text and art.

It's all a balancing act, and the number of maps you generally see in a volume are all part of that balance. Adding maps = having to cut content in other areas, and vice versa.

That said... the idea that folks would prefer maps of areas where there's no need to do tactical combat stuff that requires maps is kind of a new request as far as I've seen over the past 20+ years of doing this, so that's why we chose not to include maps for these areas.

Yes, I want maps for non-combat encounters for Player Headquarters. This felt very much missing in Spore War and in Wardens of Wildwood. And Stolen Fate. Make less "generic forest / bridge / wasteland" maps, we can use the generic ones for that. HQ maps are always useful because the GM sometimes has to deal with things devolving into combat in their own base, or players want to bring back prisoners who can escape, or any number of events. It really helps set the context and immerse, especially with foundry vtt now.

It would be interesting to play as some sort of high level diplomatic corps type of character. I'm not sure for this one what I would build.

We need a proper villains campaign where we actually fight angels, heralds of good deities and their champions, not villain vs villain again

I'm very happy with the heavy dose of Razmir content, and the focus on multi-lateral diplomacy. It felt well thought out and works.

What map are they using for the meetings at the estate in the Foundry VTT module? I half wish there was budget to include an original map of it since we spend so much time there this book.

Nice! Hoping for Cheliax next:) then we will have everything for the war

I agree with ch2, I was impressed by the execution.

We've had years more practice at integrating Victory Point type stuff into Adventure Paths since Fist of the Ruby Phoenix; that feedbak's great, but I'd love to hear some similar feedback from more recent Adventure Paths that use this stuff. Curtain Call is a great example; with that one's focus away from lots of combat, I ended up using all sorts of Victory Point style rubrics for encounters there.

I'm critical of the research subsystem in curtain call, wasn't super interesting as a game system. Story was great but would rather less math.

I enjoyed this book, but in almost every Paizo adventure, I feel like my players will side with the opposite NPCs that the adventure presents. I'm glad that there was text in the adventure offering the PCs to side against the orcs from the Darklands, and with the surface dwellers. The nastier, meaner, and stronger looking NPCs are always the cooler ones to ally with for some reason.

Overall, I quite like this book for its open-endedness, clear objectives and many ways to achieve them, the art is incredible as always, and the maps were interesting as well.

I'm sorry to the technology fans to say that I like the lack of guns in this one (I am not a fan of the orc deity who is a gun-totter).

Sometimes, you just want the orcs to be presented as magnificent bastards and cruel savages so you can enjoy allying with them and they won't be judgmental about your choices and mistakes lol

This AP is now fully published. Does it end well? Satisfyingly?

I hoped the siege of Wyvernsting would be longer and involve more large scale battles. Suffice to say I didn't like book 3 much...

It would have cheapened the setting if the most prolific villainous deity was a meme conjured by the fandom. I thought it was amazing, I hope they make a novel to flesh things out.

Is the vampire fully statted as a vampire? From what I remember vampires are notoriously difficult to kill for low level players. (Not a critique, in fact I kinda hope he is statted as a full vampire)

Yes, he's a vampire count from monster core.

It took a third party (shout out to MythKeeper on Youtube) to point out just how connected Belkzen could be for multiple trade routes and how their positioning is one of Ardax's primary motivations.

Yes, we need a lot more political context for these types of APs that present a region.

The maps are very cool. Not a fan of the majority of NPCs, the pathfinder one seems particularly out of place. I don't like the Lastwall one. Exceptions are the vampire who is a delicious addition, and the berserker lady who wants to hulk smash but she's also a secret Ardax supporter.

Honestly, we needed a lot more backmatter to flesh out the politics of Orcs. I don't understand what's going on, what's happening with the rebels, it doesn't feel all that immersive to me. Can I request the backmatter be linked to the adventures again, instead of being about more deities or mini adventures or a region that the PCs won't even go to. This would make the books much more valuable in my opinion.

Book 2 is a lot better than book 1 imo. Huge fan of the One Eye hold, the Oathsworn orcs, and the last boss. Beautiful art for each of those 3.

I am disappointed there are no grave orcs mentioned.

Ancestries would be the easiest, and I'd be interested to see what might be done with a "gnome" or "halfling" AP as they don't have particular homelands. Religions could be very interesting, though I'd do pantheons or accords rather than solo deities unless said deity is the ultimate villain, e.g. Norgorber in Curtain Call. A Radiant Prism three-parter makes all kinds of sense in all kinds of ways (bonus points if it either kicks off or concludes in June).

I adore Strength of Thousands, so I'd be up for an organization AP. The only snag is that an AP centred around one of the bigger organizations should probably be a six-parter. The scope of SoT showed a lot what the Magaambya does, and I greatly appreciated that. A Pathfinder AP (as in, the players are officially Pathfinders) deserves no less, and it could easily have that same mix of overarching plot and side stories. However, you could get into smaller organizations with a three-parter. A high level Riftwarden AP could work very well, as would a low or mid-level AP that gives us Eagle Knight or Lion Blade intrigue.

I'm also hopeful for a nation AP. The Runelord trilogy, Rebels/Vengeance duology, and War for the Crown are excellent, and a number of others have touched on such matters as well. I've wanted an Andoran AP for quite some time now.

Highly political APs are complicated to develop, but they pay off, because they do a lot of work for GMs. Especially paired with a Lost Omens region book.

Man..

My DREAM themes are...

TENGU.

HELLKNIGHTS.

And this is something really out there, but a new 6-part Kingmaker in a new region, new story, new everything... this would make me super excited. Building your own kingdom is the ultimate wish for players, conceptually, if you can pull off the army battles.

When you eventually turn your attention to political / war theater / intrigue heavy / deep dive on one region APs, I think the model for Wrath of the Righteous worked really well and hope to see more of, where the NPCs get an arc and work on their agendas. Just an idea!

I'm noticing this pattern.

Book 1 introduces NPC side character allies
Book 2 never references them again, and introduces new allies
Book 3 never references them again, and introduces new allies

You usually only have the main NPC questgiver that stays around.

Would it be difficult to have follow through on these characters without them being GMPCs following you everywhere (like the hated Sakuachi in Gatewalkers)?

Razmir cultist on the cover?

I agree that the writers should choose more judiciously what to focus on. Often times, the main story feels disregarded because the author thought it would be cool to have a scene in an arena, a casino, or make an obscure reference to an old film, and take up a lot of word count on that scene, rather than weave the plot around the main attraction of the story.

Sometimes, it works. You clearly enjoyed the devil gambling scene, for example.

But overall, it ends up feeling like everything is a bit disconnected and recycled for me.

What I love about the adventure path line is the fantastic art, the maps, the backmatter when it lifts the story (I don't feel the backmatters in book 1 and 2 were satisfying to read) and the main ideas for the AP are always strong (even though the execution usually strays from the main plot).

What I love about Bring the House Down, and why I think it's the best of the 3 books, is that I don't feel there's any self-indulgent side quest self-insert with quirky NPCs from the author's live game. There's no distractions. It stays with the story it wants to tell and executes on it.

I am really in love with the idea of A Story of Secrets, and I would kill for a fully-fledged theatrical text with all the "The text is dense, complex, and riddled with deliberate confusion and contradictory elements, but a close study of its pages can reveal very real secrets about Norgorber’s early childhood in Vyre." part.

I think it would be a blast to just give the text to my players and instead of rolling checks for the research subsystem let them dissecate the book and compare notes with the information all other sources could present "in roleplay" with dialogues and interactions to slowly let them put Norgorber backstory together by themselves.

PS: Please I would also kill for a portuguese translation that kept the lyrical aspects of the text such as metric and rhymes. I'm awful translating lyrical textes.

I'm dying for the full length novel where Norgorber meets his djinn friend and gives him poisons to transform him into Venomfist. Passes the test of the Starstone. Looks for his missing sister. And rescues his sickly friend and mentor Thamir from the river of souls.

CastleDour wrote:

Predictions on what evil god is in Belkzen?

Urgothoa? Demon Lord? The God of the Ghouls?

Based on the title?

Zagresh.

Well done lol

The audiobook investment is impressive, Samantha Moon did a fantastic job voice acting everybody. I can't imagine anyone else trying to do Kyra. Maybe use some music you have available, since you have a large library of sounds and music at your disposal?

Mark, can you tell us if the sales are encouraging you to do more novels? I need more pathfinder novels...badly.

Also, when you click on godsrain on the main page, the link doesn't work.

I REALLY hope more Norgorberite Vancaskerkins show up in adventures. Best family in Golarion.

Centaurs are so back!!!

No I'm using Geb and Shenmen as examples of a micro region (as opposed to macro like Impossible Lands). Ideally, Paizo can organize products around a theme (like Godsrain or Absalom) and have more support for regional adventures happening in that theme (setting book valid for more than 1 adventure) within a 2-3 year timeframe.

In my opinion it's about spacing things out so each area gets enough depth before moving on to the next.

The current pace is too fast for me and leaves me less invested in Golarion.

When we get to a new area, I want to be immersed in it for a longer time. Not back to back APs, but more than one over the course of 3 years.

The reason I don't want Arcadia YET is that it didn't have any seeds / plot hooks in the World Guide, or Legends, or the Character Guide (although I concede it did in Monsters of Myth).

So let's say Paizo delays plots they set up in 2019 for another 2 years. After 7 years, like Leon said, I've moved on.

It's more urgent to resolve the Razmir storyline, and kick off the big wars of the Inner Sea.

I am very interested in Ah Pook, Arcadia, but not if it's going to have such a short release window and with limited adventure support. The setting is best utilized in my opinion when it can support many adventures, like how Lost Omens: Absalom supports Extinction Curse, Agents of Edgewatch, Abomination Vaults (I assume, as I never read or played AV), and Stolen Fate.

I want depth, so I can take my players into a micro region (Geb, Shenmen, etc.) and have more than 10 pages of setting material. At the moment, it just feels not deep enough, with each region just being quick flashes in the pan.

Ultimately I'm not in marketing, analytics, or sales, I'm just expressing my opinion as a customer.

I don't want to colonize. I don't want to get involved in converting the local orcish culture to a different culture, in subjugating orcs, or in extracting their resources and treasure in exploitative trade. I don't want to settle their lands with people from my nation.

What I want is to help the friendly orcs build a nation, to unify the orcs that want to join the international community, those that wish to live under common laws with their neighbors.

Orcs' propensity for violence needs to pacified by force if they are hostile, and security must be established for safe travel to and from the orcish holds.

Right now, Belkzen is a bunch of disparate tribes who don't consider Belkzen to even be its own region.

We have to support and enforce some kind of power structure we can work with so we can have fair (non-exploitative) trade. For example, we help them with their problems and they send us mercenaries to help us with ours.

But as a mercenary, I would stay out of the politics of trade policy and focus on the mission of bringing order and security, and hope to make some friends.

Niktorak wrote:

It's taken over 30 years to get some of the answers to questions that were laid out at the beginning of Warcraft and we're still not even close to done. It's exhausting.

You have roughly 5 years I think to put forth an answer to a mystery or to flesh out a faction you've prototyped in your fiction.

After that, the community has created its own answers, and they find them more interesting than whatever you can come up with. I think with TTRPG's, where GMs are constantly required to have answers to questions not contemplated by line developers, this is even more true.

Yeah, this is why I want to focus on the Inner Sea region and Tian Xia rather than go to Arcadia in the Adventure Path line. I prefer to resolve existing plotlines rather than expanding ever outward to brand new regions again.

CastleDour wrote:

Envoy from the Order of the Nail.

The Order of the Nail is typically pretty straightforward violent colonizers. Do you have a twist there, or is the aim to just be a real bastard for this one?

I like that they have a centaur hellknight, it looks cool! Not a fan of colonizing in general, but taming the wild and savage lands of Belkzen does have a certain appeal.

I want whatever spell Geb used on the Field of Maidens

CastleDour wrote:

So in book 2, Father Skinsaw appears (Norgorber himself, not his manifestation) and takes Fenton's mask away.

In book 3, the manifestation of Father Skinsaw, which was created months ago before the start of the adventure and set loose on Vyre to create a superweapon, now has the mask.

Is this an editing error?

** spoiler omitted **

Why does he do that?

So in book 2, Father Skinsaw appears (Norgorber himself, not his manifestation) and takes Fenton's mask away.

In book 3, the manifestation of Father Skinsaw, which was created months ago before the start of the adventure and set loose on Vyre to create a superweapon, now has the mask.

Is this an editing error?

I had third thought: I think direct sequels to 1-10 aps work best if they don't explicitly assume pcs are same from 1-10 ones. Just like how none of runelord sequels did or a hypotethical "numeria dominion of the black" ap would be a sequel to Iron Gods.

Like, you would leave it up to table if they want to bring old pcs back or create new party. All of level 1-10 aps lead to that kinda naturally.

The only direct sequel I am even interested in is Season of Ghosts lol, the others feel mostly resolved besides Gatewalkers

Tian Xia was not explored enough. I prefer to go deeper on one topic than go wide on a huge map and many topics but only shallow examination.

CastleDour wrote:

Making a Not Sequel isn't a reason to not link to previously established lore and major events.

I 100% agree. I'm on the boat of Not Sequel I see no reason that "meta events" and themes can't be brought forward into new stories and locations as long as we're resolving the issues.

CastleDour wrote:

Curtain Call - Bring the House Down gives us a lot of missing pieces about ** spoiler omitted **, but for every question it answers, 10 more questions come up.

There have been a ton of AP's that have been slowly drip-feeding us info on Norgorber and at this point I'm a little tired of him. I think what they did in CC is very cool but it just felt like a "Until Next Time!" mustache twirl ending...

It's tough to decide how to divide the revelations with multiple product lines too.

Does a story resolution go into a standalone adventure? Adventure path? Lost Omens setting book? Or a pathfinder novel?

All these things take years to make and require extensive planning to link together.

Great feedback so far! Thanks all, and keep it coming!

One thing of note—it's important to me to NOT "use up" the compelling mysteries of the setting. Like when a forester cuts down trees, they plant new trees for the future, I very much enjoy seeding new mysteries whenever an adventure I'm developing resolves them. Often seeding more than I resolve. That way, we enable future adventures and future generations more to work with and explore and be intrigued by.

Some of these new mysteries will eventually be answered and explored, but not all of them. I would rather not have time to resolve everything and keep the unresolved out there to compel and inspire new stories for new generations than get to a point where everything of interest has been covered.

A bit of expectation management, I guess, to not expect us to explain everything we do. Especially not in a timeframe of "soon."

George R.R. Martin will tell you all about his seed-planting gardening style putting his next book 13+ years late!

You have a huge team now working on Setting that can plant new seeds, so you have a lot of runway left, and can aggressively start resolving things.

Some things are better done in adventures, experiencing it yourself, like journeying through war-torn nations, brokering deals with nobles and thieves, beating immortal deities' best servants, and boosting/sabotaging major organizations so much the Setting can't ignore it.

Take the Absalom book alone. We still don't know what happened to all those candidates for Primarch; will Wynsal step down? It's been years.

This is the easiest type of high level Adventure Path for us to produce, because the developer doesn't have to be an expert on the previous ones and doesn't have to spend extra time taking care of linked plot threads.

Making a Not Sequel isn't a reason to not link to previously established lore and major events.

Curtain Call - Bring the House Down gives us a lot of missing pieces about

If you were to not touch on this again, it would be a major disappointment.

As you keep writing new APs, the difficulty curve for the developer and writer keeps going up because the audience expects for previous hooks to be resolved and expanded on, and a canon ending provided.

But that's what makes it exciting. If it's just new stuff, that can be done in any setting, then it won't be as interesting.

I will vote for Not Sequels.

I will be honest, I don't have any nostalgia to Varisia/Runelords since I only started Pathfinder a few years ago. Whenever a spiritual indirect sequel comes out like 7 Dooms, I feel like "this AP wasn't written for me". Even if you start level 1 and previous knowledge isn't required.

But I will say one thing, I will get tired if Paizo just keeps creating new story hooks that don't get resolved.

I can't wait 5 years to know what happens to Geb/Nex, Cheliax/Andoran, Norgorber/Vyre.

I want enough things to get resolved first before new things are introduced, or else it feels like a video game where your quest log gets too filled up and you lose track of the story and give up.

They should make the killer the last boss of the next adventure like how the MCU seeds the next villain in every film, in this case it would be very fitting

Skull and Shackle DOES have a lot of Norgorberites too, I must admit.

Paizo, I bought your War for the Crown pawn box.

I know you have art for a Stabbing Beast human form token.

PLEASE can you share it with me.

"I like the other stuff, not the opera".

Relatable lol. 100%. At least MAYBE it leaves the door open for a full on Norgorber Adventure Path in the future, because that's the content I want more of in this product line.

I had the same reaction as you to Richard Pett's previous work. He wrote Vyre, War for the Crown, Skinsaw Murders, etc., so I expected better connections to Norgorber right from book 1. Fighting a random gang is not memorable enough.

The Ashen cult thing as a red herring is maybe a bit underbaked. I don't understand if this will become a big thing in future APs or they meant in book 2 when Fenton hires them to trouble the opera.

I agree with you that chapter 3 ends on a high note. BUT Richard could have made the gang be more high up in the food chain of Vyre to make it feel more epic, and connect it better to the city lore, like add interactions with the Abbatoir organization. Who even leads the thieves' guild in Vyre? Why do we not meet them?

You liked chapter 1 more than I did. I wish it was set on Vyre island instead of Osirion, and built up to chapter 3, giving us more time to showcase what Vyre is all about.

Anyway, I liked book 2 better than book 1 because of the BBEG and ending, and book 3 is one of the rare books that I LOVE ALL 3 CHAPTERS of, which is a unique experience for me since I tend to not like 1 chapter in every book usually.

So I agree with you guys except on 1 point, I will push back and say that the Opera House becomes a good home base for the players that you spend 1 chapter in each book in, where you can interact with the cast and crew and get to know them better.

There were also callbacks to Rebels in 1e, like the crabapple inn, which didn't do very much for me. Would rather have met Hellknights, which are mentioned in every Vyre centric article in Lost Omens or Rulebook product lines. Why are they sent here, who do they negotiate with, how did this alliance happen? How did the Skinsaw Cult take over Vyre, and why is it so dominant? There are SO MANY unanswered questions.

Very interested in this adventure. Are their opportunities for level-ups in each of the three plots? 1st to 7th is a big leap, and I'm still pretty new to the system.

Seeing as how most adventures cover 3-4 levels, and the wording of the text here, the players will not level up their characters until the end of the adventure.