Enpeze's page

You might try meetup.com and see if there are any groups active in the area.

I found this in Bozeman

The League of Extraordinary Gamers

super. thank you very much for the tipp and your help

I am looking for a good puzzle or riddle adventure where the players dont mainly fight their way out but rather solve riddles. Are there such adventures in Pathfinder? I take smaller society modules suggestions too. It has not to be that large. Thanks for any info.

alot of ship maps the last years, but not a single one good swamp map.

Well in many respects I do understand the OPs issue with Golarion. Not long ago we had a similar and very detailed discussion about the Golarion background material in a large rpg forum in Germany.

For me there are 2 main source books for Golarion

- The Inner Sea World Guide is a work of pure art and easly one of the best RPG book ever produced. (much better than anything WotC ever released - except maybe the new Elminster books which is also good but entirely another scale than the ISWG) It has the perfect detail level one can suspect from an world overview.

and

-The Guide to Darkmoon Vale which has all the necessary details I like in a local area sourcebook

Now to the other books

- the 64p campaign books are ok but not really that great (graphically they are of course - I speak from the content). In most cases, but not always, they are sufficient to cater the basic description needs for an entire nation. But OTOH in other rpgs I am used to 150-250p sourcebooks about single nations with a more detailed description of them.

-the 32p companions - well I really dont like them. I refer to them rather as "extended articles" than as books. Unfortunately these are often the only source for some important nations like Taldor or Cheliax.

I would suggest, Paizo gives out a new series of eg. 120p+ books with a more detailed description for a single important nation, full with local maps, local fashions, better description of national military and politics and the description of national cities and customs. Like the 64p book, only much more into details.

Its interesting that we have 2500 pages description per year for Golarion but we dont know how a typical chelish soldier or war galley looks like, or we dont know what the noble families with the most influence in Taldor are. We have dozens of pages per deity but we dont know how the ranks of Abadars clerics are called (except the Archbanker which is the head of a temple). So in this wonderful setting we have alot of fluff words but very few fluff details. (in comparision to the word count)

One additional wish I have: I would love to see more adventures with alternative themes to the usual dungeon crawl. For example I think that many nations have beautiful and very unique themes which are never adressed in an module.

For example Andoran. The main theme of Andoran is freedom and a kind of fantasy democracy. (exactly how do they elect their government? again a detail which is left out untill now despite having dozens of pages of fluff description) Why dont we have an Andoran adventure module which is designed around such a national theme like democracy? (eg. the adventurerer prevent election fraud)

All in all Golarion has many pages but few deeper details (compared to a page count of 2500 per year), but one can hope that this will be corrected someday.

Monk = Kwai Chang Caine.

Enpeze wrote:

But this set is much more complicated than the BCMI set. In those days I could write up a character on a beer mat. The rules of the red box has been so simple that I could explain them to a newbie in 3 minutes.

Now even with the simplified pathfinder in this box I need a full sized sheet of paper and I have to explain all these bonus modifiers, spells, skills etc. This says all. Maybe you as a designer and hard core fan you are too much into the rule system to be able to correctly evaluate the complexity of pathfinder (even the version in the new box) to a newbie.

Thats not to say that I dont appreciate your effort to produce this great set. I absolutely like it. IMO its a beginning that rpg companies finally recognize the value of simpler rules sets for the future of the industry and their own future. This makes me optimistic.

I'm not worried at all. I went through the original Red Box when I was around 10. Granted, I was kind of an advanced reader, but if a kid is really interested and excited in something they won't really stress about this or that rule. They'll jump in and make mistakes.

I have my own copy of the Beginner Box now. It has a solo adventure that is about as easy to go through as the original Red Box's solo adventure. Then the bulk of the Hero's Handbook deals with character creation step by step. One thing that's very useful are the letters in bright green circles on the character sheet -- every single instruction in the Hero's Handbook tells you which letter to go to fill in information.

There's a lot of math, especially when you get to Skills. None of it goes beyond basic plus/minus arithmetic, however.

And come on, let's face it -- unless you're math-averse, part of the FUN of the game is dealing with all that math and seeing how powerful your character is going to become at the end of the process. :)

Also, let's not forget that Pathfinder might have the appearance of being more complicated, when actually it's because it's more user friendly....

I am not worried either. I am sure most clever teens can handle the rules in the new PF box. So no prob here. But the question was if children can handle it.

And of course you are right, the presentation (clunky language, tedious layout etc.) of the BECM boxes was bad, but they didnt know it better in those days, so I have no problems with it.

What really counts for me is understanding and memorizing rules of a game, and I think its sure to say that BECM is far easier and superior in this because its lacks all the elements which makes Pathfinder so complex.

I can understand it from Paizo PoV because the real reason to bring out the box is not to change the current paradigma into "complex is bad for newbies and veterans alike" but to lure newbies into the "the more and complex the better" cash-cow paradigma of the current edition. If this leads to more customers I strongly doubt, because such a policy again serves only to usual suspects, a minority, the nerds, and not the majority which are casuals. (contrary to the BECM boxes which despite their failures in presentation were simpler to memorize and thus perfect to serve millions of casuals too)

Enpeze wrote:

Also, this "graduation from basic to full PF" sounds very elitist to me.

I didn't intend it that way. I just meant that that's probably what Paizo intends from this set, that players get their appitites whetted by levels 1-5, and pick up the Core Rules to continue play. I think levels 1-5 are certainly enough for most people to decide if the hobby is for them or not.

I know. With my post I didnt of course mean you or someone specific, but by reading some posts in this or other threads it seems that in the Paizoforum there is a strong opinion by some, that a "real" (D&D?) rpg has to be a 1000p+ rule encyclopedia to be counted as full and that everything below this insane pagecount (like the basic box with 160p booklets) is just a "newbies or beginners game" with the goal of a later "graduation" into the "full game". This I strongly oppose.

Using a complex system and enjoying it is just one of many approaches to roleplaying. Systems like Savage Worlds, or BRP are very easy to play and learn and alot of excellent roleplayers and veterans are enjoying them. (not only casuals or newbies)

So in conclusio - one can say that rule complexity has nothing to do with veteran or newbie, only with personal preferences.

But what if the BB box does not easily bring people up to PF? Would producing a BB2 box to hopefuly bridge those people be worth it?

This is very likely. Beeing able to play from level 1-5 is nice but in the end without at least level 10 the whole basic game experience seems limited and for some not worth the effort of eg. a change from another rpg system.

Also, this "graduation from basic to full PF" sounds very elitist to me.

So players of the Basic game are now second class players? Even more - this "graduation" means that they are no good roleplayers because they refuse to read and learn thousands of pages of unnecessary rule bloat?

I am playing/GMing now since nearly 3 decades and in my humble experience its rather the opposite. Fewer and easier rules = more time to roleplay.

I agree. Journeys are good classical fantasy themes. Lets hope that the Tian Xia has the same good and detailed maps than Iobaria and that the journey AP is not much railroading. :)