Artemis Entreri

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Goblin Squad Member. Organized Play Member. 105 posts. 39 reviews. No lists. 1 wishlist. 1 Organized Play character.



Scarab Sages

I want to start a Pathfinder/Golarion campaign soon. Most of the players are not at all familiar with Golarion. I would like to run a series of short one-shot atventures (preferably single session) that show factions, history, nations, gods, setting flavor.

One reason is that we will probably use 13th age mechanics, and I'd like the players to get a chance to run a few different character classes to get a feel for what they want their PC to be.
Second is I want them to get an idea of what the setting is all about.

Also, I'm trying to figure out IF i'm going to use the Icon rules at all, and if so, what should golarions 13 Icons be (actually doesn't HAVE to be 13). Any suggestions?

I was thinking of reinacting some kind of Galt revolutionary session involving the guillotines. Maybe some kind of brief Osirion pyramid crawl. What other historic events would lend themselves to one-shots?

(forgive my writing style, just typing off the top of my head.)

Scarab Sages

We have a group of 4 (sometimes 5) that play at my house in Lakewood CA. We are looking for 2-3 players for various games.

We are currently playing 4th Edition Gardmore Abby game.
We are looking to try out 13th Age RPG.
I am big on Pathfinder, the rest of the group is just okay with it.
We have tried some Marvel RPG, and FFG Star Wars.
We occassionally do board games like Lords of Waterdeep, Castle Ravenloft, etc.

I like and own some X-Wing miniatures and would like to get into more.

We are all mid/late 30's or older. We rarely drink, no smokers in the group right now, but we could accommodate that.

Currently, we are playing on Wednesday evenings 6pm-1030pm

Send me a PM if interested.

Scarab Sages

I was hoping that someone could tell me in what order the stories of Varian Jeggare and Radovan occour in.

I have read "Prince of Wolves" and am about 1/2 way thru "Master of Devils"

I know "Husks" takes place immediately before "Master of Devils", but where do the other stories fit in??

Scarab Sages

So after a good 2 year break from GMing (with the exception of a couple one-shot adventures), I've started running Rise of The Runelords. A few problems have cropped up, and I am wondering how to handle these situations.

First off, Doors.
The party has no rogue, but even if they did, I'm not sure we wouldn't have the same problem. A door stands between the party of adventurers and the next location they intend to go to. Here is how the dialog between GM and Players might go:
GM: "Ok, you are in front of the tower, about 20' from the front door."
Player: "Is the door locked?"
GM: "How are you going to determine that?"
Player: "Well, does it have a lock on it?"
GM: "You are all about 20' away from the front door, are all of you going to go right up to the door, or just one of you, to examine the door".
Players: "we draw our weapons and get ready for a fight, the Oracle goes up to the front door"
GM: "it's a sturdy wooden door, there is a keyhole below the knob."
Oracle Player: "Is it locked?"
GM: "How are you going to determine that?"
Oracle Player: "I search for traps" (rolls D20) "a 19 perception!!"
GM: "hang on, you don't get to roll that. Tell me you are searching for traps, and your Perception modifier, I'll roll and tell you if you found anything."
Players: (roll eyes) fine, I search, +5 perception.
GM: (rolls) "you don't notice any traps."
Oracle: "Is the door locked?"
GM: "I don't want to start assuming your actions, you step up and turn the door knob?"
Players: "For crying out loud!!! The heck with it, I scream a battle cry and kick the door down!!! Do we have to play out every detail!?!?!"
GM: "What do you want me to do, just cut scene narrate everything until initiative is rolled? Let's do it your way, you all are standing in front of the tower, Oracle runs up to the door and grabs the door knob. Electricity courses thru him from the door knob, and a pit trap opens below his feet. Then, you're all going to say "wait, we would have done things differently, we wouldn't just run up to the door like that"

So, if I prompt them for checks and ask for details, they start metagaming taking combat formation and triple searching everything.

Next, combat positioning and initiative.
We use miniatures and always some sort of drawn out combat grid. In one example, the PC's finish off a monster in a cavern. PC miniatures are spread out from whatever their last position in combat was before the monster died. One PC picks up his miniature and moves it to one of the walls that has something interesting carved into it. Another is drinking a healing potion, the rest are doing nothing. A bad guy, who heard the battle, sneaks to one of the cave entrances next to a big stalagmite and points his bow at two of the PCs who are near each other. Bad guys position near the Stalagmite is perfect, has two lightly armored PC's in line of site, one ranged PC is totally blocked by the Stalagmite and one fighter type is farthest away with a stalagmite of his own blocking line of site and providing an obstacle from charging. The bad guy announces "Drop your weapons!!!"
But now everyone grabs their miniatures, "oh that's not where I would be, I'd be over here somewhere" "Oh yeah, I would have been closer, like here." Now, they are in perfect tactical position, and the bad guy would be foolish to ambush them in this circumstance. I say "wait, you didn't say that you were moving anywhere, where your miniature is is where you are." Players respond: "You should have asked us where we are at before you started the encounter." After some resistance from me, they get frustrated and say "fine! that's where I am! I guess I had packed up all my weapons in my backpack too! Maybe I should be prone at the guys feet! Whatever!"

So, I try to launch a surprise encounter and NOW everyone wants to be specific about their position NOW that they KNOW something is going to happen. I tried to explain to them that my asking for their exact positions would be an obvious tip off that it was important and something was going to happen. They would then "metagame" and try to take advantage.

Other than having some fairly troublesome players to deal with, what else can I do to not have to go thru this every time?

(And sorry for my sub par writing skills... no my strong suit.)

Scarab Sages

Let me start by saying that it is hard to come across in the proper tone in a typed post. I am sure that things are very busy at Paizo, and that there are many things that go on behind the scenes that most of us Pathfinder fans will never even know about.
That said, the lack of promised Shattered Star previews is frustrating. At one point I was going to go back and document a timeline of all the missed previews over the course of the Pathfinder Battles Miniatures lifetime (and there are many), but it would have come off sounding to negative and petty.
We understand that things come up, and you missed posting on Friday. Is Friday the only day things can be posted? How about catching up on the next available day? If Erik is too busy, how about passing the job off to someone else. If you only post pictures with no text whatsoever, that would be better than nothing.
So please do not take this post in bad spirit. It comes from a big Pathfinder fan who is excited about a fine product, and has logged in faithfully every week to see the announced weekly previews, only to be let down week after week.

Scarab Sages

I'm a huge fan of ALL THINGS PATHFINDER. Anyone that works for Paizo can check my "order history" and see my purchases.
However, I feel like I can't keep up with so much material. Fortunately, I can afford to buy whatever gaming books I want, but I'm finding it harder and harder to justify buying more and more books due to the fact that I cannot possibly read them all before the next shipment arrives.
My "backlog" of Pathfinder books gets bigger and bigger each month. Now I have the Pathfinder Tales novels coming at me at breakneck speed, and they too are starting to pile up. I've read 3 of the novels in the past two months, and browsed over countless sourcebooks just so I can say I opened them, but the pile gets bigger and bigger.
I'm sure there are fans out there who have either more time to read than I do, or read much much faster than I do, or both. But, I have to think that a good chunk of the fan base might be feeling overwhelmed like I do.
I would love to get multiple Flip-mats and Map-packs each month, miniatures can't get here fast enough. Various card decks are awesome to have, etc. They all help my games with little or no additional time investment necessary.
I hope that the pace these books come out can slow down, just a little bit. The most important thing is to keep the quality of the artwork and writing high. Spend more time editing and proofreading the books you put out. (I hate so see books so riddled with errors like "Inner Sea Pirates" and "Adventurer's Armory").

Scarab Sages

I'm about 80 pages in, and I'm really enjoying this book. Nice murder mystery and great use of Golarion lore.