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Thor motivates his followers like he battles his enemies: with a hammer. I thought that last panel was awesome. Durkon's god is showing complete faith in him. It's a perfect role reversal in that regard. But plot wise, this is exactly where we all knew this was going once we found out about the god color thing. Durkon has to make peace with Redcloak. Probably behind Xykon's back. But first Durkon has to be resurrected. Not sure if Thor can do that without a mortal casting the spell, which is where Hilgya comes in. But she'll have to be convinced to actually do it. Which is probably where Loki comes in. And I am kind of wondering what the rest of the Order has been doing while Durkon is busy here.
So I know Paizo has been having issues with their web site and all, but it seems to be relatively stable for now. So it seemed like a good time for me to download the Playtest rulebook and give it a look. But I can't find it. I only get links to buy the hardcover and softcover versions when I type "playtest" into the search box at the top of the page, but no pdf version. I was told at Gen Con by Paizo employees that the playtest rulebook would be free to download. Is that true? Can someone provide a link? Where is it?
The part I still don't understand is why Paizo ever agreed to partner with Ninja Division in the first place. When the Kickstarter was first announced, I hadn't heard of Ninja Division, so I looked them up on Google. It took me all of 2 minutes to discover that the one thing they're best known for is disappointing their Kickstarter backers. So I intentionally avoided the Kickstarter. If I could find that out so easily, why didn't Paizo do at least that much research before making such an obvious mistake?
Am I the only one who has a problem with the banner on the top of the page? The search box overlaps with the "Sign In" or "My Account" option. I resize my fonts to larger than average because of my lousy vision, which sometimes create problems like that on some web pages, so it wouldn't surprise me if nobody else has the same issue. But given all the empty space between the Paizo logo on the left and the search bar, it would seem to be an easy fix - just move the search bar a little to the left, so it's not so close to the other stuff on the right (which overlaps for me).
I think that was my group. Had a fun time with this at Gen Con, now prepping to run it locally.
I had to look it up: Belkar getting the clasp from the gnome. I remembered he had it, but wondered why it didn't help earlier. I forgot that rubbing it was the activation, which Mr. Scruffy did. Interestingly, Belkar is expressing his feelings, and the clasp isn't hurting him. His alignment just officially shifted - he's no longer evil! As for Durkon's revelations, now I want to go back and read ALL of it, to see all the memories and how this was all set up. I'm not sure how I feel about this payoff, though - does this mean the vampire is no longer evil and no longer works for Hel? Shouldn't all vampires go through this when they're done absorbing all the memories of their hosts? I still don't quite get where that's all going.
Man, after so much build up, the big fight against Mokmurian turned into a big dud after he rolled a natural 1 on his save vs. feeblemind just a couple of rounds into the encounter. I knew that sort of thing was a risk going in, but it's still frustrating. Oh well, the players still had fun and enjoyed their victory, and I guess that's the most important thing. I had something like that with Barl Breakbones. My group killed him way too easily. Mokmurian, on the other hand, caused the group's second PC death - that was actually a pretty epic fight.
I don't know Michael Eshleman. From the way he's described here, he sounds like a good guy. But I do know Paizo. I've been a PFS player and GM for 7 years. For the first year I was a player, the area where I lived had no venture officers. The first guy who applied for the V-C job got it, but he was a jerk who drove female players away, and he was quickly removed from the position. I've known several good venture officers who have never been removed by Paizo, though some have stepped down over the years, as life got in the way. So from what I've seen, Paizo does a pretty good job at deciding who needs to be removed from V-C positions when something goes wrong. So who do you expect me to side with? The point is we don't know the specifics of this situation. And if the details can't be posted here in this thread, so we can all find out what went down and judge for ourselves if it was fair, then this thread is pointless. You can't expect everyone on the Paizo forums to go wandering all over the internet looking for information on a situation that doesn't concern us.
Agreed. Since the rest of us don't know why he was removed from the position, we have no basis to judge whether or not it was the right decision. So why would any of us support a petition? And what's the point of this thread?
I remember playing Race for the Runecarved Key at the high tier (14-15?) with the same group of us who had gone through Eyes of the Ten together. There was one encounter where the GM flagged a "runner" over to the table to let them know we were done with an encounter, and they were like "already?". At high levels, a well coordinated group can sometimes totally break encounters. Things like teleportation to get ahead of the enemies or Dismissal spells to remove summoned foes can really wreak havoc, even besides the uber-optimized damage dealers.
That were ... intere'stin'. Durkon seems to have more control over showing Durkula memories than I realized. I knew Durkon's mind could jump to something and show it, but this seems like they're talking about a greater level of control than that. And Durkula cares more about that than I would have expected. Now I'm really curious where this latest memory is going.
I wonder how much of the fact that it doesn't come up in regards to NPCs is the fact that only until recently has Paizo been doing anything in regards to non binary cultures. Its weird to say that when canonically there are groups within Golarion that have no cultural understanding of gender that its not necessarily relevant. I completely agree with Hillis and Lau on this one, and I really don't understand your reaction. PFS isn't like a longer campaign, where players might want to take the time to get to know NPCs for their personalities. In PFS, the players are only focused on what they need from an NPC for the mission, and rarely care about the NPC's details unless the GM really plays it up. Half the time, the players don't even remember the NPC's name, let alone gender or anything else about them. I can't even count how many times I've heard "What's the name of the mayor we need to talk to?" or "Who's the other guy we were supposed to see?" (regardless of the gender of the "guy" in the latter) And when it comes to enemies, it's even worse. Those are just minis on the map. Generic thugs are always assumed to be male. Unless the GM specifically says otherwise, in which case they're assumed to be important NPCs, not just generic thugs, because generic thugs are always male (and usually light skinned humans).
I'd just like to point out that I was only pointing out the logical fallacy of your argument, but that doesn't mean I was taking sides. I don't have a problem with the Paizo schedule the way it is. As Hillary said, the big specials are so noisy that they MUST use the entire Sagamore, because it would be challenging to play anything else in that room at the same time. Pathfinder gets two of them and Starfinder gets one, based on their relative popularity and importance to Paizo. It makes perfect sense. And personally, I'll only be in the Sagamore for two sessions the entire weekend this year - the Friday night Pathfinder special and a regular Pathfinder game Thursday afternoon. I have other plans for much of the convention, though depending on how late I stay up Saturday night, I might consider wandering into the Sagamore Sunday morning with generic tickets to see what PFS game I can sneak into. And despite being a 4 star GM, I don't like spending my vacations "working", so I've never GMed more than 4 sessions at Gen Con. This year, I won't be GMing at all. For those who are complaining that you don't have anything to do in the evening when a special is going on for the game you don't play, I highly recommend trying True Dungeon. It doesn't matter if you Starfinder fans aren't a fan of the medieval fantasy/Pathfinder/D&D genre - the experience is worth it, anyway. Those tickets are expensive though, so if you don't want to spend that much, I'll recommend Upper Deck's Marvel Legendary deck building game that I've gotten into lately. You can get into a beginner/intro game of that for only $4.
Yeah, it'a a pretty big bummer to have ZERO offerings from the flagship game on the last night of the con. It's not very fun to be force fed Starfinder as the only Paizo offering that night. Especially two years in a row. My two cents. False equivalence. Pathfinder is the flagship product of the company, and makes up a large majority of their business. Starfinder isn't.
Agreed. I'm skipping this one at Gen Con this year, because I'm just not interested. I'll play the final version to see how it all ends, assuming I have the chance.
I'll be with some friends at Gen Con who used to play RPGs regularly years (decades) ago, but mostly just play 1 or 2 games per year at Gen Con these days. They've done Pathfinder with pregens at past Gen Cons and enjoyed it. From playing with them, I know that they just want to roll some dice and bash some monsters, so they're not overly concerned with skills or plot. Any recommendations for which scenarios they'd most enjoy at Gen Con this year? I was thinking From the Tome of the Righteous Repose should be a good dungeon crawl for them, where we can go bash some beasties. I've played and GMed it already, but it's replayable, so we're good. What else is on this year's Gen Con schedule that's relatively combat heavy? It doesn't have to necessarily avoid skills and a plot (Pathfinder adventures never do), but I know they'll want lots of combat.
Events seem to be up now. Haven't decided on anything for this year's schedule yet. But I was just looking through the events and noticed that Paizo raised the ticket price for the multi-player specials. Regular PFS/SFS adventures are still $6, but Solstice Scar is $10, and the new PFS and SFS multi-tables are $12. I doubt if that will affect my decisions as to what to play, it's worth noting.
And a side note to Fromper, please don't fade away from the boards entirely - I have been following 2 books behind you in the Rise of the Runelords GM threads for the last 3 years as I GM our home campaign. With Latrecis having finished book 6 last month, your group finishing soon, and a few other frequent and helpful ROTRL posters coming to the end of their campaigns, I feel like a high school junior watching all the seniors who showed him the ropes graduate. Thanks for all the love, everyone. Actually, my Rise of the Runelords campaign ended a couple of months ago. The heroes won, but the final battle was long and bloody, with multiple PC deaths. Truly an epic fight. That's part of the reason I'm GMing less. You'd think I'd take the time that I used to spend on Runelords prep and convert it to more PFS GMing, but I'm burned out enough that I'm rarely GMing anything any more. I could go on about the reasons I'm not playing as much, either, but I don't want to derail this thread.
Findeladlara may actually work. My character is joining the adventuring group specifically to seek out some rumored elven ruins. He'll stick around for other things, as the nature of the adventure changes, but that's his original interest. Also, her writeup says that her followers and those of Shelyn have something of a rivalry. Not outright hatred or contempt, but just different ways of viewing art. My party will have a cleric of Shelyn, and possibly a bard who also follows Shelyn. That could provide for some fun rivalry between PCs.
Actually, two of my missing tables are from playing the specials, but I didn't GM them. I'm also missing play and GM credit from regular PFS scenarios. And I know someone who was missing GM credit from several regular SFS scenarios as recently as maybe a month ago, but I don't know if she still is. Maybe those were reported since the last time I talked to her about this.
I'm making a new PC for a campaign (unlike all my PFS PCs), and I'm trying to figure out what deity he'd worship. The character is an occultist, interested in objects of historical significance. He wants to go exploring ruins and seeking out such items. So basically, he's an archaeologist. Which deity would be most appropriate for that, given that it's very much his primary personality attribute. Also, he's an elf (probably from Kyonin) if it matters. The best I can find is Desna, as the goddess of explorers. I couldn't find any that are focused in history or preserving old items, though I suppose that could fall under Shelyn's artistic area. But the items he's interested in aren't necessarily artistic - they could be anything from armor and weapons to everyday household goods. Given the hundreds of Golarion Deities, you'd think there would be something related to history, but I can't find it.
Bob, are you even aware of how big this problem is? Every single person I know who attended Gen Con last year has given up on ever seeing their sessions reported here on the site. No exceptions. Some of them have seen maybe half of their sessions reported, but many of us (myself included) haven't seen a single one get reported. We haven't bothered sending emails to complain about it, because this thread told us not to. The last update here was that it was still being worked on. Nobody has ever officially said "OK, we're done with what we know about. Let us know if we missed anything." And since none of us have pictures of the reporting sheets with all the player and GM numbers, most probably won't bother complaining, anyway, since we know there's nothing you can do about it. But it does effect things. In my case, due to this and another convention from last summer never being reported, it took a couple of extra months to officially get my 4th star. There are some adventures that require 4 stars to GM, which I've been looking forward to being able to running. But at this point, my annoyance at the delays has dampened my enthusiasm to the point where I don't even want to bother any more. I know this isn't your fault, and there's really nothing you can do. But showing up here to tell us that everything's supposedly reported, when we ALL know that it isn't, can best be described as tone deaf. Most of us would probably be fine with an apology from Paizo along the lines of "We goofed - sorry we'll never be able to report those sessions, since we don't have all the data". These things happen. We get it. It's the lack of official response that's more annoying than anything.
I've already given up. Not just on this. I've kinda given up on Paizo altogether recently. This hobby has just about reached my limit on the number of minor annoyances I'm willing to put up with. Some of them aren't even Paizo's fault. This one definitely is, but it's also among the most minor. But recently I'm playing less, GMing MUCH less, spending much less time here on the forums, and buying far fewer new products. I haven't reached the point of leaving the hobby or boycotting Paizo or anything like that, but I could see it happening if some other game grabbed my attention right now.
3. If the scenario brings up their transness in a way that’s visible to the players, don’t skip it! – I’m mainly looking at 8-99 here. The way 8-99 brings up the fact that Medda Spiritbreaker is trans is natural and visible to the players Completely agreed. When I played this at Gen Con, I didn't notice that the NPC was trans. Even when I read it in preparation to GM it, I glossed over it as one of those back story details that the players will never have any way of finding out in game, which are so common in PFS scenarios. But I may not have been concentrating as much as I should while prepping that one - I was dealing with the illness and eventual death of a pet at the time, so I was very distracted. And responding to a comment from the other thread that spawned this one: I can't speak for MadSci, but I know that I felt extremely uncomfortable at my store when they hosted The City of Strangers scenarios, both because of the scenario's content and the players' reactions. Agreed with this, as well. When I first played City of Strangers and met Miss Feathers, our GM really played her as a stereotypical drag queen. We all (apparently, including the GM) thought she was supposed to be a RuPaul/"Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" type performer. We had no idea she was supposed to be transgender. As a straight, white* cisgender male, I'm finding this whole conversation (and the start of it over in the other thread) to be educational and useful. Thank you to the LGBTQ folks who are speaking up to help the rest of us learn. *
I didn't say that's the only thing the book did. I said it's the only thing I've heard about it. As I said, I already felt overwhelmed by the rules bloat of too many books in this game, so I really haven't been paying much attention to the new releases, pretty much since Occult Adventures. Weren't there already rules for Hellknights and Red Mantis? I have a friend who played the Hellknight prestige class in PFS back in 2012. I think that's the other thing I had previously heard about that book - lots of reprinted material. Again, nothing I heard made me the least bit interested in checking out the book.
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