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Well it is kinda of nice when you are playing a psychic gunslinger it feels like you are playing a psychic gunslinger and not a gunslinger with a little psychic ability.

Those 'fiddly bits' as you call them are often the difference between telling people what your character is instead of actually showing them what your character is.

Besides most of my characters are not based on the 'big points'.

Was not my intent to condescend. "Fiddly bits" is fairly common parlance for RPGs that have lots of minor mechanics. It's not inherintly bad. Pathfinder, for example, is very fiddly, but it's still a good game.

That said, there were a lot of classes in Rifts that, in a sufficently flexible system, need not have existed. Psi-Slinger was one of those (wasn't there a tavern wench class?). Of course, Rifts has more "cool stuff" in it than any other game I can think of, so you take the bad with the good. I can definitely see why people like it.

Lol...sorry the system is okay. It is a generic system though which means it does everything 'meh'...

But it has let me down because of my friend Eli. Eli loves Savage World and has probably has talked about starting various Savage World games on numerous occasions and has never follow through even though I have brought books before. Should I have explained that better.

Anyway I wish you luck in this. If my GM decides to convert his Rifts game to Savage Worlds than I am not going to quit his games because of it....I just hope converting characters is possible (like my Zenith Moon Warper).

I see what you mean there. It definitely needs to have campaign rules added to each game to make it feel like that genre. But, when it does, it runs smooth (though the math can be somehwat delicate, and encounters can be made too difficult). Tell your friend to get off his butt and run something!

This is basically our dream project at Geekspeaker (at least, Ryan's).

As a long time Rifts player...I am interested in this news till I got to the system. The Savage World System...there are really just too many options in Rifts for it to do a good job. Also my history of the Savage World system is like the girlfriend you keep going back to...yeah she looks good and all that but eventually she will just keep breaking your heart.

I'll check it out...but I don't think converting 10% of my characters will be possible...so ultimately I'll stick with the Rifts system...as to me at least characters are more important than system.

There's lots of stuff in the Rifts world, but a lot of it is extraneous in a streamlined system. Do we need rules for a psychic, a gunslinger AND a psychic gunslinger? A wizard AND a russian fire wizard? As long as they're hitting the big points (glitter boys,juicers,dragons etc) I think most characters will be conceptually possible, even if they don't have their own encumberance of fiddly bits added to them.

How has the game let you down? Most of our players just love it. We have trouble getting them to play something else.

the "Scooby-Doo" style of play where folks' characters can never die without that player's consent

Ew.

That said, there area also folks who have had some really negative experiences with the "my NPCs are bigger/badder than you can DREAM and you must SERVE!" types of crap.

That's true. I can be very sensitive to that. Esp if I get charmed or teleported into a situation. The PCs have to be given some kind of choice in the matter so they can flip the villain the bird and walk out.

Ugh, I hate to ever get into a Paladin alignment debate, but I will...

I wrote a whole article about this on our website, but it bears some re-iterating:

Paladins need a concept of utilitarianism and/or the common good. And to this end, the COC can and should be bent.

The paladin knows he will likely die if he charges the lich. If he does so, and the quest fails because of it, then he hasn't cured the plague and the end result is a net win for evil. If he works with the lich (naturally, he still can't do any evil himself along this quest), it's a net win for good. Because it tips the scale toward evil, attacking the lich is arguably the more evil course of action. One can always find counter examples to this kind of thinking, but this isn't one of them.

If he could kill the lich, that would be a different story, but he can't.

As for dealing with the attack: The more I play these games, the more I enjoy seeing somewhat believable consequences play out. I certainly wouldn't soft pitch the Lich's reaction. If it were my game, the lich would start with a humiliating domination/telekinesis/something similar, then follow up with a curse/geas/polymorph or something similar to give the attack some long-term consequences (nothing that makes him useless), then tell the paladin/group "ya get one" and send them on their way. If the PC still insists his paladin is attacking, then oh well, new character time.

I take this attitude toward players in general. You can try stupid things, but they will have consequences. I don't like to kill them if I can avoid it, because that closes a door instead of opening one, but I won't shy away from it either. (This also goes for NPCs. Don't be surprised when your party bloodthirsty "lawful good" murder-hobos kills the corrupt chancelor instead of unraveling his dastardly plot).

I think it sounds like a wonderful idea. I wouldn't allow some 2/3 casters (bards, Magi) either as they're quite good in their own way.

A party like this has to rely more on cunning than intelligence. They need social skills and clever solutions to problems that can otherwise be solved by "throw magic at it." You might have to give the poor 2 skill-point classes some bonus points (they need it anyway), and avoid some of the more bullsh*t powers that specifically require magic to solve (petrify, some save-or-sucks), but it could definitely be done at low (or even medium) levels.

You might have trouble with a high level game, because creatures become so very magical. But, most people I know like to sit in the 5-11 sweet spot anyway.

Thanks for responding, everybody. We really appreciate being welcomed by the community like that.

Hi, I'm the VL for your area and can certainly help you out with anything you need. We post most our games at michganpfs.org. You've caught us at an interesting time as I'm formulating a big push to up our player base in GR. Starting May 9th I'll be running games every other Saturday at Out of the Box in Kentwood. Other wise we run everyother Sunday on that same weekend in Greenville, MI at Exceslior Games and Comics. How many players are you looking at? I can also set up a game at a time which may work better for you. You can message me on here or at slafayette00@gmail.com.

That IS quite a coincidence. We have 2-3 people at GeekSpeaker that are wanting to try PFS . Our schedules are crazy, so we can't always commit to a set game date, but we'd LOVE to have to some new people to play with! If you're looking to increase your playerbase in GR, I know some other gamers who might be interested.

Welcome Geekspeaker!

There is actually a good sized PFS community growing up in Grand Rapids these days, but we west michigan folks are not good about always getting our game days posted onto the Paizo site.

I would recommend you check out a couple places for info on current west michigan PFS events. The first is http://michiganpfs.org/forum/recent which is where we post our regular game days and track sign-ups.

The PFS sessions at Excelsior Games in Greenville are probably going to be your best bet. They have multiple tables of PFS every other weekend. They have a Facebook page that can let you see what that community is up to: https://www.facebook.com/groups/317049681703093/

The Excelsior group has a lot of players who are fairly new to PFS and its a great environment for learning the ropes.

Feel free to contact me directly if you'd like more specific info about contact people, or any other questions that may be on your mind.

Thanks for the link! I'll check that out and share that with the other guys at GS.

Thanks again, everyone!

We're from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I apologize if this is a common thread, I didn't see one like it being posted on the first couple of pages.

We're looking to try out Pathfinder Society so we can write about it on our website. I had a few questions I thought I'd ask. I'm sure we can find some official answers, but I'd like to hear from players what they're experiences have been.

-How much knowledge of Golarion is required? (or better yet, expected by players and GMs) We've played Pathfinder, but only in homebrew settings, and none of us have time to really get to know the setting intricately.

-What do the adventures tend to look like? More action-adventure, or heavier RP?

-What level of optimization is generally expected by players or balanced around in adventures? We want to make characters who are good at their jobs, but we don't want to play in a game of all summoners and druids.

-Is there a best way to find a game locally? I know I can find some games on the forum. Do most PFSers play that way?

-Should we just hop into any first level game? Or do we have a sort of official location for our characters? Is it better to start at the beginning of a "season"?

If anyone has any other tips to give us, that would be great.