Coz's page

I almost never post here (or anywhere for that matter), but this topic has made me delurk.

I absolutely believe Jessica Price and Robert Brookes.

And what they say about Mentzer and Webb is damning enough. But there is another thing that I have to speak up about:

That a volunteer was silenced from reporting the abuse or harassment they suffered while participating as a volunteer because they were under NDA.

That is absolutely not what NDAs are for. An NDA exists to protect trade secrets and business practices, not to silence victims. If terrible anti-harassment policies are a trade secret or business practice that Paizo has to protect itself from with an NDA, then Paizo is not the publisher I thought they were and are unworthy of our support, monetarily or as volunteers.

I am not a Paizo volunteer. I do run games for another publisher and I would quit in an instant if I ever heard they threatened a victim in this manner. I would encourage any of Paizo's volunteers to stop volunteering until Paizo investigates the allegations and unequivocally states that their volunteer NDA will not be used to silence victims.

Paizo, and all publishers in this industry would do well to remember that they cannot put on successful events without the legions of fan volunteers who sacrifice their time for the love of the game. No amount of swag or con or hotel reimbursement is worth putting their safety or their ability to report harassment and abuse on the line.

Please, Paizo, get in front of this, do the right thing.

I've been using it as a novelty d2, but I usually just use any even sided die for that. :) Oh well I guess I'll keep it, maybe Paizo will do another Goblin adventure next year.

Hi, so I got this wooden coin for playing in We Be Goblins Too! at last year's GenCon, I was told then that I would need more than one to do anything with it, but I could save it for this year. Well, you're not doing a We Be Goblins Three (For some unknown reason), so I won't be playing any Paizo-run Pathfinder games at GenCon this year. No offense, to those who do enjoy PFS, but I don't, so I won't be playing those either. Is there anything I can do with this single wooden coin?

This sounds cool, really. And I understand that you want to preview the new ACG, but is there a reason why you couldn't do that with We Be Goblins 3? I love the We Be Goblins series, I buy it every year (my local FLGSs dont do Free RPG Day) but I guess I'll just get the free PDF of this one this year.

Please, bring back more Goblin focused adventures (or an AP, everyone else is behind a Goblin AP, right?), they were seriously some of the best fun I've ever had running or playing PF.

Good to know, thanks for the quick reply!

In the FAQ it states that:

"During the Round 1 voting period, you will be shown two different wondrous item entries, and may pick which of the two you think is better. You can vote as often as you like. Each time you visit, you will be shown a different pair of wondrous items and neither will be one you have seen before."

My question is, if you submitted, will you be shown your own item? If you are, are you allowed to vote for yourself or will that disqualify an entrant (or look shady to the judges)?

In any event, thank you for your suggestion, even with it generating items I may not necessarily want in my game I can just ignore those and generate another.

It seems that you need something like Nethys Random Item Generator

O. M. G. That's fantastic, almost perfect. Do you know if there's a way to make it only generate items from the Core rules, I'm trying to avoid power-creep so I don't allow most things outside of core without careful consideration.

Hey all, I've been running KM for a little while now, my group (5th level) is a 3rd into volume 2 and have 4 settlements, across which I have to generate 5 minor items, 3 medium and 2 major items nearly every in-game month, thankfully, my players have allowed me to cease generating minor potions and scrolls (they're not interested in buying those, they just get sold in the income phase), their economy checks isn't high enough to always pass the check to sell major items so I don't have many of those to generate (they always want me to roll those, even though they can't afford to buy them generally). I tried to pre-roll the items and had a list of a couple dozen minor and mediums but they blew through that quick. After a few weeks of kingdom building we've got the kingdom turns down to 3ish minutes each (which is good, as I lose the interest of half the players during that part of the game), but doing magic items just takes too long, I'm using the table on this page (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#Table-Random-Magic-Item-Generation) to determine what category an item is and then rolling on the tables in the magic item section of http://www.d20srd.org since d20pfsrd doesn't include tables for silly unimportant stuff like what kind of weapon or armor and what specific scroll or potion is generated (and has unuseful sub tables like lesser minor and greater major item), which is kind of a pain since I then have to check to be sure that said item still exists in PF or hasn't had it's name changed, etc. I'm looking for an online generator where I can specify "minor item" or major, or medium and have it spit out a random item.

Can anyone help?

Slavic, yes that's the vibe I got off the name of Restov/Rostland. I'm still trying to wrap my head around a fantasy setting with more than one human language, I'm glad one is still the "common" tongue for most of the world though, but I haven't decided what they each sound like, I imagine a barbarian tongue would sound Germanic. Luckily my players haven't asked yet, they're more focused on things like, so this river here, which way does it flow, and is the direction it flows from higher elevation than where it flows to? I need elevation maps of the stolen lands. :)

Thank you. Google here I come. It's Horns of the Hunted by Matt Goodall, looking around the publisher's site I see a lot of interesting stuff I might use.

I think I'm set on adventure ideas at the moment, I just was listening to a podcast (Know direction I think) with an interview with a freelancer who was making an addon to the "kingdom building" adventure path to slot in in the 3rd or 4th volume to tie the fey weirdness from volume 6 more into the AP, I wish I could remember the name of the guy or the adventure or publisher, because that sounded like a good idea. For the moment, the last things the PCs did was encounter the grig and fairy dragon in the woods (they didn't see them they just heard them giggling and running around the branches), and I fully intend to have a lot of fun with Fey pranks over the next few in-game days, I wonder, can you use mage hand to tie bootlaces together (RAW probably not, but It's a good enough idea I think I'll try (I'll give the victim a save though to be fair)), assuming the PCs befriend the two fey I will probably use them to direct the party to other points of interest as necessary. As I said earlier, I have a couple small cave dungeons I've drawn and statted up to slot in if I need to, but I'll be tossing more encounters their way in general as they explore to eat up their supplies as I can.

When I read the KM was a sandbox, I assumed it was a sandbox for the players, that is that they could decide which direction to go (like a sandbox video game), I haven't run a published module in a decade or more, I'm more used to modules where just about everything is done for the DM already. Now that I see it's a sandbox for the DM as well, or more like a skeleton campaign setting, it makes me even more excited to run it, I expected to put my own spin on the AP already, now I see I get to really develop it for my and my players' tastes.

As to names, I'm actually not so bad at coming up with them on the fly, if pressed, I look at the credits page or kickstarter backer thank you pages of whatever books I have at hand for human names and race descriptions for non-human (Dungeon world has some great name lists on their class sheets) and I write down the NPC's name and details as I come up with them.

I have the inner sea world guide and guide to the river kingdoms (and I read pathfinderwiki for fun), I assume that most countries/cultures in a campaign setting are a pastiche of real-world places, I haven't quite figured out what cultures that Brevoy/Restov/River Kingdoms represent which would make naming people easier (so, for instance, Galt is obviously revolutionary France, so I would use French sounding names for NPCs from there), I think the River Kingdoms represent a melting pot, almost a pre US american wilderness, I see the Mayor of Restov is named Ioseph Sellemius, the first name is Greek and the Last name sounds vaguely Greco/Roman, but I didn't really get a Greco/Roman vibe from my reading.

This week's session got cancelled due to real-life, but I did speak to some of my players who indicated they were enjoying the campaign so far, they had no input when I asked if they thought they were leveling too slowly, I'm almost tempted to run KM with the E6 rules adapted to PF, anyone ever try that?

Wow, Redcelt, thanks, that's a lot of good advice, I'm working on getting my players more interested in the world of Golarion, perhaps regional politics earlier will help with that, they've chosen deities and backstories (which is commendable, as nobody should become attached to a 1st level character).

You can also go with a more political game - there's some REALLY good suggestions in Redcelt's posts. That would flesh it out a lot more.

I intend to make it more political once they have founded their nation.

The party are still getting used to differences between 3.5 and PF. Other than myself, only the Player who is playing the Oracle has played any PF prior to this, and a few times a session I have to gently remind someone, that no that's not how it works anymore for some ability or skill or something else. As I look at it now, I think I may have been going to easy on them for the first pair of sessions, I'll have stop reminding people of things they can do that they're not used to.

Even with a suboptimal class mix (they initially talked about a 4 or 5 paladin party), this group can overcome a lot of challenges, me and the group's other grognard have instilled within them an Old-school style, they spend their starting gold smartly, we live by the adage that if it's not on your sheets you don't have it (and while I don't enforce it, they actually follow the rules for encumbrance[unless someone tries carrying the whole dragon's hoard by themselves]), they took the bandits' horses for themselves after the initial ambush and bought a wagon (I allowed it, they would have ridden back to Restov to buy one, and I wanted to get into things), multiple characters have handle animal and they all have ride, after some initial successes they bought enough food for the party and it's animals to last in the wilderness for a couple weeks at a time.

My challenge is to challenge their resources fairly, I could simply have a wyvern fly off with their draft animals, but I need to find something fair, even this elite party of 1st level adventurers would suffer a TPK against a Wyvern. I think a rival bandit party to harry their journey is just the thing, maybe 2 warrior types, a rogue, an adept or druid or cleric and an arcanist of some sort (probably sorcerer or and enchanter or illusionist mage), and keep their rivals at the same level as the party (if not slightly ahead), ooh, I haven't worked in the wanted poster for the merc yet, I think I have an idea... (Thanks everyone)

As a bit of background, my part consists of:

One Paladin played by an experienced d20 player
One Paladin who has been playing a year and change
One Fighter who has been playing as long as I have
One Oracle who has played 3.5/PF for a few years
One Ranger for whom this is her second character

I was re-reading stolen lands last night and noticed where I failed my reading comprehension roll, it's 5% on entering a hex and 15% per day or night exploring or camping that a wandering monster can occur. Had I read that, and been rolling more often I'm sure we would have had a few more encounters. I'm not used to running published modules at all, I usually write everything myself, but my players wanted to play this and I wanted to run it for them, my initial assumption that being designed to cover several levels that it had enough content on it's own, I'm rapidly discovering that not to be the case, I've already added my own friendly NPCs to the game that the PCs have interacted with, and as I mentioned I want to use the kobolds for more than a speed bump on the road to rulership (maybe the PCs will redeem them, maybe it'll be an uneasy alliance)

My PCs stats were rolled, I'm generous (roll 4d6 drop lowest 7 times, drop lowest of the 7, twice, choose best set of stats, assign as you like), the fighter likely rolled 3d6 6 times, and then assigned or some other crazy thing from the 1e DMG, he likes to challenge himself, probably why he went fighter with a Paladin's stats. One paladin has a nice spread the rest of the party has a flatter curve to their stats (but more stats with a better bonus than a point buy usually affords)

To account for the extra party member I've already increased the encounter size by 20% and/or added HD, maxed hp, or outright fudged hp for some baddies, I roll behind a screen but don't usually cheat, however I think I'm going to just add some 'random' encounters and locations to the AP.

It's good to know that my experience with the pace of volume one isn't an isolated experience. Back to the drawing board, I've got some good ideas to work into this.

I'm not worried about killing a character or two during the game, I told the players right off the bat that there's no destiny, even when one of them becomes king or queen, they can die (I also couched that by telling them that they shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking just because it's in the adventure doesn't mean they can defeat it (at least not yet), ie: they should know when to run).

*de-lurks*

Hey all, I'm running Kingmaker. This is the first AP I've ever run but most certainly not my first time DMing (Been gaming 20+ years, 90% of the time behind the screen).

So my players were unsatisfied with the last 3.5 game we played with another DM (we leveled roughly once every 1 to 1.5 sessions for the first like 9 levels) so I offered to make a clean break from 3.5 and run KM using PF, the players are all excited to play, they just want to level much more slowly than they've become accustomed to, even with the slow advancement track it feels like KM still will hand out too many XP and have the characters blowing thru their first 3 levels quickly (this is important, they want to, strangely enough, be underpowered for a longer than normal time in a fantasy RPG, I can understand that, some great stories come out of those early levels where the odds are really against you (like in 1e or in RIFTS where you almost never level). Following the guidelines in Stolen Lands I know the characters need to get to level 3 before they challenge the Stag Lord and should finish the module at about 4th level.

To resolve some of these issues I've simply told the group to mark down 1 xp per session and I'll keep track of xp and tell them when to level.

We've had 3 sessions and it feels like the group is blowing through the content of this module, the party is 5 instead of 4 and while I haven't given them any levels yet they've fully explored 14 hexes and even defeated the bandits at the camp in area K (experienced roleplayers can do a lot even with 1st level characters). The guidelines in the book give a 5% chance per day of exploration for a wandering monster encounter to occur, as I've said they've gone thru 14 hexes, and as the percentage would indicate the dice have actually come up under 6 on d% once giving them one encounter (1d4 (I rolled 3) trolls, which they wisely ran from before the monsters noticed them).

Last session I asked the group if they feel as though they deserved to level yet (I didn't say why), they said no, a couple mentioning the old 14.5 encounters per level standard from 3.5, they've had maybe 4 combat encounters, but by my notes they should be second level now with bonus xp from exploration and quest completion (moon radishes and fang berries) and not for nothing they're good roleplayers so in a typical game I would have awarded bonus xp for that.

I want to honor my group's request that we level slower in this game, but I know the needs of the module and the AP itself require them to get to certain thresholds at certain times, I know the leveling will slow down once we get to the second module as they take copious downtime to develop their nation, and they're kind of blowing through this content faster than I had anticipated as well.

At this point I'm not too sure what to do, I've developed a couple of caves with goblins (why goblins, because I like em and they don't appear in this AP and I don't want to make the PCs make enemies with the Kobolds yet [they had a delightfully peaceful encounter with the too full of fangberry Kobolds and I hope to nurture a peace treaty instead of wholesale slaughter) I can throw in to slow them down and use their resources to make them go back to Oleg's and spend more time in traveling so we can stretch the module out somewhat, the only other thing I can think to do is to have more random encounters whether indicated by the dice or not. And to spend even more time roleplaying with NPCs (as that takes up a bunch of real world time without necessarily advancing the plot by much).

Do any of you have any advice for me?