I'm enjoying the first volume of the adventure path. I'm a bit of a grognard, so I really enjoy the return to the classic theme of Against the Giants. I hope an upcoming AP will be along similar lines.
That said, there is something that really stands out in the first volume:
Spoiler:
In at least two instances it is stated that Rodrik and Brinya met in the Plague House to "share their love." I can't help but think they must be into some kinky stuff if they're willing to meet in a Plague House to begin with - much less one haunted by souls claimed by the plague and that also happens to be infested with large, aggressive spiders and spectral rats.
The (actual, not felt) recoil of a firearm can be rather easily calculated. The formula is E=.5MV^2, where M is the mass of the weapon itself and V is the velocity of the projectile as it leaves the weapon.
Almost. The energy of the recoil would be .5*(massofbullet*velocityofbullet^2).
The whole "I was hacked" story doesn't hold much water; however, it is possible to lose control of your media files through file sharing software.
Several years ago, I downloaded a popular file-sharing program and installed it in order to download a patch for an MMO that was in torrent form (official patch servers were down). I started the download and went to bed. When I woke up, I discovered that over the course of the night I had uploaded about 10gb of files because the software automatically searched my hard drive for sharable media and allowed other users to download it. It wasn't just .mp3s. Lots of .pdfs, .docs, .xls, and the like were taken. Fortunately there was no banking or significant personal information stored on the computer, but I had a heart attack nonetheless.
I was really mad about it for a while, but I eventually concluded that I got what was coming to me for dabbling in that sort of thing.
As a sailor, I find it hard to swallow that The Wormwood Mutiny describes the job of quartermaster as having something to do with maintaining and issuing supplies. In an army that would be an accurate description; however, aboard a ship the quartermaster is chiefly concerned with navigation. The men responsible for maintaining the ship's stores were called storekeepers.
Specifically aboard pirate ships, the quartermaster was the ship's second in command. He (or in a few rare instances she) typically led the boarding party to capture a prize.
Please triple-keelhaul the man responsible for this outrage.
Many people I have encountered who gave their kids "unique" names were themselves fairly "unique" people. Naming your kid something weird because you want them to turn out a certain way is just wrong. "Merlin" might sound like a cool name on a Pathfinder message board, but do you really think his resume will be taken seriously in 25 years? Maybe he's not going to like fantasy at all; maybe he won't be anything like how you want him to be. Naming him John isn't going to handicap his uniqueness, but naming him after a Lord of the Rings character could certainly affect his chances at being something he might want to be. why potentially burden a child with a weird name simply for your own amusement? That sounds pretty selfish to me. It doesn't matter if you think the world should be a place where people don't get judged based on something like an unusual name. The world is a cruel place, why create one more obstacle to overcome?
That sounds more like a stupid business decision with regard to price setting as opposed to evidence that boxed sets cannot be profitable. People are paying 50 bucks for some rulebooks, what's another 10 for a good boxed set?
Josh isn't saying they charged $8 for a $10 box set. He's saying the amount of money that came back to them, after the retailers and distributors took their cut, and after writing off the units that never actually sold, there was a loss.
*takes a huge sigh*
Of course those weren't real numbers... I owned many boxed sets, thank you, so I am very well aware that they did not cost 8 dollars.
Simply put, if you're losing money on each unit sold, it's because you made bad business decisions. Whether it's too low of a price, shipping too many units, vastly over/underestimating demand, whatever.
Let me clarify my original statement. You seem to be hung up on the fact that my hypothetical example also used 10 dollars. If people will pay 50 bucks for a rulebook, I'd be willing to bet they would pay another 10 and get a good boxed set for 60 bucks.
I believe that Paizo does all this on purpose, to avoid the 'Canon Curse'.
THIS. I like SOME detail. Maybe detail one site in each kingdom that every visitor should see, but leave the rest fairly open.
Joshua J. Frost wrote:
TSR lost money on every single box set they ever sold. Think about that for a moment: if it cost them $10 per unit (and that's a guess) on every box set they produced and they only made $8 back in revenue off each set, they lost $2 for every set they sold. That is (and was) a quick way to kill your own company.
That sounds more like a stupid business decision with regard to price setting as opposed to evidence that boxed sets cannot be profitable. People are paying 50 bucks for some rulebooks, what's another 10 for a good boxed set?
I usually announce it just as the die stops spinning.
One time this Rogue named Black Leaf died from a trap. I did not allow the players in my game to even acknowledge the existence of Marcy, the girl who played Black Leaf.
Unfortunately Marcy couldn't take it any more and hanged herself before she even got a chance to read some Christian literature.
I agree with zurai in that eventually its really hard to figure out the 'fair' place where your character would figure out that cold spells might be a good idea against the red dragon or the fire is a waste of time. Not everything should require a knowledge check in my view. Even if you dont have book knowledge it's possible to figure something out.
Of course there is no hard and fast rule that says a character may not know anything until he has personally experienced it. I think most inahbitants of a fantasy world would be aware that red dragons breathe fire.
The problem I have with creating new monsters for every adventure as a cure for metagaming is that it isn't a cure at all.
Yeah see now in my game I discourage that sort of behavior by reducing experience. Metagame thinking annoys me to no end. As a brief aside, if players start playing like that, then the monsters metagame in their own way too.
In other words, you encourage metagaming in the opposite direction. Once a player knows the capabilities of a monster, even if it's through having encountered it legit rather than reading the stats in the book, it is impossible for the player to act exactly as if he did not know the capabilities of that monster. Thus, penalizing them for it only encourages them to go the other way and pretend they're absolutely unable to draw any conclusions from obvious cues which they would have drawn if they didn't know the capabilities of the monster. Thus, still metagaming, and still just as harmful to the game.
IMO, the only metagaming that really needs punished is the blatant stuff. Players keeping track of the monsters' HP, (in 3.5) power attacking based off what they know the critter's AC to be, etc.
No not exactly. It has more to do with role playing vs. roll playing. The Int 6 fighter who has never encountered a demon before announces to the party that the horrible demon from the 27th level of the abyss can only be slain by magical weapons made of truesilver. In so doing, then yes, he would take an XP hit for that encounter. Frank the player may have read that in the bestiary, but Twitchy the Fighter sure didn't.
A player who asks for and succeeds on an appropriate knowledge skill would, however, be able to pass on that information. Even if the player didn't know it, I would provide the information as if the character did. Depending on the situation, I don't have a problem with two players talking to each other in game terms as long as it isn't providing an unfair advantage to the characters.
A character who has absolutely no reason to believe a monster will attack him with fire yet protects himself with fire warding spells upon seeing it will be rewarded as if the encounter was a CR or 2 lower.
But to answer your main question. GMs like new monsters because enough players buy the Bestiaries (or Monster Manuals when it was 3.x) that there was always a need for something new to throw at them.
Ender_rpm wrote:
I agree, too many players have the Bestiary committed to memory (guilty as a player myself).
Yeah see now in my game I discourage that sort of behavior by reducing experience. Metagame thinking annoys me to no end. As a brief aside, if players start playing like that, then the monsters metagame in their own way too.
Lynx wrote:
Second, I would have to say to some creatures...why? I know the simple answers are, well there shaped by the gods, they are experiments by mages, ect... and to some extent I can buy it, but its not a blanket. I mean we can all think of some 10 armed crazy powered monster of some type, but why is it still here, why hasn't rampaged off. It "living" in area, how is it fitting with ecosystem. If just killing everything why isn't this a barren wasteland and the thing died of starvation?
I just like pieces to fit and yes I know its fantasy and its not going to but sometimes a really good story, gives me some semblance of "why". Not just, "uh the archwizard made these creatures and left" Thats it?? arg!
Now Paizo I think has done a pretty darn good job with fleshing out nearly everything they do. Very well "put together". But I understand also the concern for putting brand new monsters in everything also can get a eyebrow raise to.
As usual, somebody is able to translate my own thoughts into words better than I am.
James Jacobs wrote:
Monsters are also a HUGE draw for most GMs. Just as players will come out in droves to buy new books that give their characters a new set of toys in the form of new feats, spells, and magic items, GMs will come out in droves to buy new monsters.
cappadocius wrote:
Because some people just buy D&D books for the monsters.
This is the driving force. That's what people want to pay for, so that's what they are delivered. It is, I think, possible to have too much of a good thing though.
DMcCoy1693 wrote:
Yep. It is. That is why the world needs heroes.Like the Players.
Yeah, but it really hinders the suspension of disbelief for me. Like I said, it's just a thought I had.
This isn't a complaint, just something I've been thinking about as I browse my Pathfinder library.
Why does every adventure path chapter, pathfinder module, RPG superstar proposal, Golarion backdrop, etc. have to contain new monsters?
While I realize that new monsters can give an adventure a fresh feel, it just seems like the well of monster innovation is running dry and Golarion's sense of internal consistency is sagging. Why publish a bestiary if following products will let 80% of it lay mostly dormant? The world must be a very scary place for its inhabitants if thousands of different types of intelligent, terrifying monsters patrol its forests and hills.
I don't want to see too many cooks spoil the soup. My wife was really into Design Star when it came out. Since my computer is in the living room, that pretty much made me a viewer of the show too. The show had these people that were so concerned with being unique and fresh that they would design ridiculously outlandish clothes that no one in their right mind would wear.
Of course Golarion has not reached such an extreme position; however, as the years go by, it's not unreasonable to expect more and more really out-there content. I'd like to see Golarion's contributors use what they already have in unique ways. Maybe change ideas to fit Golarion instead of changing Golarion to fit ideas?
Then again, I prefer more of a low to medium fantasy feel so maybe I'm the only one of this opinion.
I got bored and made a copy of the Kingmaker charter (the flavor text at the beginning of the adventure) as a PDF for download. This was mentioned in another thread, but thought I'd put it out here for people who haven't dipped into that thread to enjoy.
You could also have the PCs notice odd, musky smells. They could use Track and find unusual tufts of hair caught on branches, strange foot prints in the mud, etc. Maybe have a tree fall across their path as they are walking along.
Last night my PCs encountered Hairy the sasquatch of Greenbelt. The PCs were driving their wagon so fast through the forest that they didn't see Hairy in time to avoid hitting him. Most of the session involved hiding Hairy from prying eyes in the room provided them by Oleg. Eventually a NE Ranger showed up looking for clues to prove Hairy's existence and take his head as a trophy.
I'm pretty excited about it. I hope it can live up to my expectations. ...
I downloaded and read the .pdf I am by no means a huge Paizo fan, but this one is outstanding IMO. Every other AP elicited a sort of 'meh...' reaction from me. Kingmaker is going to be a hell of a lot of fun. Paizo knocked this one out of the park.
Could use some better editing though. Every couple pages I have to reread a paragraph to decipher its intended meaning because of either poor wording or clunky grammar.
Aghhhhhh....It's tearing through my skull....Must stay sane for Kingmaker. C'mon, c'mon, c'mon.
I'm pretty excited about it. I hope it can live up to my expectations. Building a legitimate kingdom/barony is something I've never done successfully with an RPG outside of maybe a short Birthright campaign.
And we are calling this an isolated incident because the 30 or so folks that have posted in this thread represent much less than 1% of the total books printed.
The thirty people posting in this thread probably represent much less than 1% of the total number of people experiencing problems with the crappy binding Paizo's discount printer used.
They aren't publicly traded, so really you can't. The best you can do is buy their products (which is generally better than buying their stock/LLC interests as far as they are concerned).
You don't have to be publicly traded to sell stock... there's just very little point to owning stock in a closely held firm that doesn't pay dividends. The company is not obligated to repurchase your shares from you, and not many people would want to buy your shares should you decide to sell them. Buying some stock would be like giving Paizo a loan for an indefinite period with no set interest rate and no requirement for repayment.
If you really want to help, just buy some stuff like Sebastian said.
I have a feeling the first print run of the 4E core rules may be error-filled, if for no other reason than they seemed like they were really rushing to get them done at the end there.
I suspect the same thing. Typos annoy me; however, not to the point where I'd be willing to wait an extra six months for them to be fixed.
But given the perceived rushed nature of 4E, I wouldn't be surprised if the editorial problem were far worse than 3E's first run.
They aren't are they? I thought I saw a post by Paizo staff saying that both were running in the black.
All I've seen was that they said Paizo was running in the black, not the magazines themselves. Anyway, if they were in the black it couldn't be by a wide margin unless they made tons of ad revenue. Dungeon and Dragon were great vehicles for Paizo for selling their other junk, which I imagine is where most of their money comes from.
I'm sure a lot of the staff at Paizo turned down better paying jobs to work on the magazines. You don't write game material to get rich, you do it because you love it.
It's just a damn shame that WoTC is foolishly moving to a new model that we all know isn't going to work the way they think it is. If people wanted online supplements, they'd download all the stuff from Limewire instead of going to the store and shelling out for a hard copy. God knows it all out there already. All they're doing is making it easier on the copyright infringers by allowing them to skip the high-res scan step. My prediction is that the overwhelming majority of their target audience would prefer to buy hard copies rather than digital distribution.
I hope for the best for Pathfinder, and I hope that the editors and staff of Dungeon are able to keep afloat financially to be able to continue doing the job they love.
So how are subscriptions going to Pathfinder? I know you can't give exact numbers, but are they good, better than you thought, below what you expected... ?
Probably about 100 so far. Mostly just forum trolls like us.
The accountants rule the world, but clearly the accountants at WOTC have no understanding of the D20 game or the community built around it.
Even if Dragon and Dungeon are operating in the red, cancelling them is going to destroy one of D&D/WOTC's biggest assets. On the books it called goodwill and is measured as an asset. It's very hard to determine its value, but in this case WoTC has clearly underestimated the significance of Dragon and Dungeon to the gaming community.
I've long suspected that individually Dragon and Dungeon were unprofitable, but how many D&D books and supplements were they directly responsible for promoting, marketing, and selling? How many people used a Dungeon adventure to bring new players into the game? How many people were lured into D&D by some great articles in Dragon? I'd bet that it's a hell of a lot more than WoTC thinks. I can understand why they essentially outsourced Dungeon and Dragon to Paizo, but why in the hell wouldn't they renew their license? Are they really that eager to get people over to their d+&*@$$ website? And let's face it, their website is crap... broken links, terrible search tools, and the content is arranged poorly.
Losing that newsstand presence is going to be a serious blow to D&D's market share. I've seen lots of businesses ravaged by incompetent senior management. What is especially disheartening is that such incompetence is usually written off as a failed experiment, and the senior managers move on to ruin other companies.
Suddenly terminating these venerable institutions of gaming with an upbeat press release is a slap in the face. It's like a doctor flashing a big smile as he gives you bad news. ":) Hey Billy, you're never going to walk again! :) :)"
1) What do servicemen find so attractive about D&D?
2) What service are you in?
3) Is D&D's popularity in the military confined to US forces?
1) It's a relatively portable game that can easily be stored and transported. Bring 3 books and a small bag of dice and you can play anywhere. It's also a game of action and adventure (albeit imagined), the same kind of thing that drives many people to join the military in the first place. Military guys also tend to be a lot less self-conscious and open to new experiences (a generalization I know, but true in my experience) than their civilian counterparts.
2) I'm in the Navy although the majority of my early career was spent attached to the Marine Corps as a medic.
3) I'm not sure I understand the question. If you mean, 'do soldiers/sailors/marines play outside the continental US?', then yes. When I deployed to Iraq I brought some of my stuff and played with a couple guys out there. I found it somewhat surreal that I would be thinking about D&D in between (and occasionally during) combat flights.
p.s. the owner of a local game store told me you can microwave a die, with the side you want it to roll most offen up, in short burst repeatedly, and it will slightly melt the die changing how it will roll.
Fizz
Well he's wrong. A microwave won't affect a plastic die. Microwaves aren't ovens, they just heat up water molecules.
One way to load the die is to rub very fine sandpaper over the side you want to land facing up. Reducing the weight by just a fraction can dramatically alter the way it rolls.
They're not from Dungeon, but if you can find them on ebay, The Sword of The Dales trilogy takes place right in the level range you're talking about. They're older 2E modules, but can very easily be converted on the fly.
hehe there will be another edition for the same reason there has been all the current editions; to make money; its all about capitalism and the mighty dallor.
Yep. Fourth edition will be released when the sales data say that releasing a new edition will be more profitable than continuing the current edition.
I too agree that the Paizo site is slow. However, remeber that Lisa, Gary and the rest have said that an upgrade is in the works. also, I am sure that they do what they do out of love, because I am sure tha no one there is getting filthy rich off what they do. ~shrugs~ They give their best, everyone. Let us cut them some slack. If after the end of the 1 st quarter and things are still slow, then we can go back to complaining.
This isn't complaining. It's giving feedback... on the Website Feedback forum.
If this website was purely for the messageboards, then it wouldn't matter a whole lot how slow it is; however, this is mainly a store. How many sales are lost because people get frustrated with the website or see its poor performance as some sort of indicator? Probably quite a lot. It's hurting Paizo a lot more than it's hurting forum trolls like me.
If this were a brick and mortar store, it would be like someone flipping the lights off for a minute every time you decide to look at another product on the shelves.
I've got one of the weapons planned for my Carceri game as a +3 blessed metalline dire pick. Automatically confirm criticals against evil creatures on a x4 crit weapon? Very nice. Plus, metalline (from Underdark) allows the wielder to change the material the weapon is made of as a standard action. Blessed makes it good, so... are we fighting a pit fiend? BAM! It's silver and good. Balor? BAM! Cold iron and good. Evil outsiders beware.
Can you put in a good word for me with the Lollipop Guild?
That's more or less how I handle it; however, I usually keep the wounds more minor. If a hit takes, say 75% of a PC's hitpoints, it's a major flesh wound. If it takes 10%, it's a minor scratch. My system assumes that having a few minor wounds presents a lapse in ones defenses and enables the truly grisly blows to land.
A blow that does very insignificant damage might represent a muscles strain or a bruise from narrowly avoiding the attack. It could also represent some sort of fatigue or a lowering of defenses.
I do not, however, change any game stats based on wounds until HP reach zero. My system is for narrative purposes only.
Really? Then come to Israel. We play D&D all day and dodge missiles all night. It's a whole lot of fun! :)
Uri, without getting too deep into the politics of it all, I am appalled by the lack of Western sensitivity towards Israel. If Mexico was firing rockets into Texas, Mexico would be a smoking pile of rubble in about ten seconds. Westerners, and in particular Americans, just don't grasp the enormous restraint shown by your government and your military in the interests of regional stability.
If this board had a sig function, mine would say "It's a game, not a reality simulation." There's nothing that irritates me more as a player then when game abilities get neutered due to the DM's own narrow interpretation of "reality."
That's definitely something upon which we both can agree.
I've had a GM go on and on about 'reality' and what doesn't fit their perception of it. It is especially irksome when their 'expertise' comes from a damn movie. "A shotgun can blow apart chains at a distance... didn't you see Terminator 2?" Challenging these self-styled experts usually results in you not being invited back for the next game.
Also, why does an AP have to go from levels 1-20? It sounds awesome in theory, but I don't think many gaming groups that start an AP from the first adventure actually make it all the way to the twelfth. Mine sure hasn't, and come to think of it, I haven't really ever spoken with someone whose group made it all the way through any of them. People lose interest.
Why not do a series of 9 adventures that take a group from level 1 to level 14?
Personally, I prefer the 5d6 drop the two lowest and arrange as desired. The is probably comparable to a 36 or 40 point buy.
I'm not a 'killer DM' but I don't hold the players' hands. The PC's are put in extraordinary situations, and in my games they need extraordinary abilities to survive, not alone succeed.
For people who clearly think 'outside the box', I find the general consensus of this thread somewhat surprising. I can understand the 40-point-buy-is-too-powerful argument; however, those making that argument should keep in mind that it would be too powerful in THEIR campaign.
Enemies have the same desire to live as the PC's. If kobolds drop the wizard PC, they'll administer the coup de grace as soon as possible rather than wait for the cleric to patch him back up. They'll stay away from the beefy 18-str fighter until all his support has been wiped out.
If the PC's are clearing out a place way too easily, adjust the CR downward. You don't have to keep an encounter at the suggested CR just because Dungeon told you to. If an encounter would clearly present no challenge to a PC, why reward him as if it had?
New players at my table are sometimes put off by what they perceive as me being overly generous during character creation. This usually wears off around the fourth of fifth encounter when they discover that my NPC's don't pull any punches. If the sky is falling and you missed that DC10 reflex save, well, show's over for Bigboned the Barbarian.
I'd like to see something along the lines of a dramatic failure. The PC embark on a quest intending to save the world. They succeed in doing what they thought would save the world, but sadly, during the moment of triumph, the world is rent with cataclysm, Krynn-style. The PC's are left to pick up the pieces and redeem themselves.
For instance:
The Fellowship of the Ring made it to Mt. Doom and tossed in the ring of power. But, uh-oh!, instead of destroying the remainder of Sauron's life force, it releases it from confinement. Turns out the old legends and prophecies were a load of crap, lies planted by Sauron's agents over the centuries, and Sauron doubles his power almost instantaneously.
I would imagine the AP to be about 8 or 9 adventures (enough time to wrap up one AP over the course of a subscription with just enough time left to get you hooked on the next), with the cataclysm taking place at the end of the third adventure.
Our group has been batting around the idea of maybe, finally, just for something different--to do a dungeon crawl.
In the realm of dungeon adventuring I am a complete newbie. I've never run one, never played in a good one, and don't really know where to start. I've done lots of dungeonmastering mind you--just not any of the old school kind.
So as I start the process of making a dungeon for my players to explore I would like to pick your brains as to what makes a dungeon crawl a memorable, great dungeon crawl...and also what things to avoid either because they're cliche or because you just don't like them for one reason or another.
I'd really appreciate your guys' feedback!
We need to get Tom Hanks in here. He really knows how to build a dungeon for his players.
