I am annoyed that the war seems to be ending roughly a year after it began like the world of Golarion's destiny is dictated by the market cycles of some strange world beyond their control.
I also don't want Cheliax to go away as an enemy. I am not against kick fascists, I just am less excited by a repeated theme of chipping away at Cheliax's borders (Hell's Rebels, Hellbreaker, and potentially Hell's Destiny). We need a variety of antagonists to keep games interesting. Not every group needs to be fighting demon hoards and mythical lyches. Sometimes you just just want to fight against societal wrongs that have an infernal bent. Some people will call that maintaining the status quo, but in a game setting I believe in conservation of narrative hooks.
Let this new world state persist, lets leave space for war stories which aren't over in a fiscal year.
Exactly how long the war takes to end at your table depends not on our marketing cycles but on your table's schedule and how fast your PCs finish the adventures and whether or not the GM extends or contracts events to spread things out.
Not gonna speak more to the fate of Cheliax yet, but maybe wait until all of these products are out before you worry about Golarion becoming a setting where there's no more villains to fight. That won't change as long as Paizo's still publishing content for Golarion! :-)
Agreed with the second point, but to pick a nit, Hell's Vengeance and Hell's Rebels were supposed to take place in parallel, at the same time, not in succession; and were only published in succession because that's just what Paizo did at the time.
And the significant complexities of that—producing two Adventure Paths that would take place at the same time but (due to the realities of the laws of time and space) had to be created by entirely different groups of people and authors while ALSO not implying that one of the two campaigns was the "winner" such that it would make the players of the other Adventure Path feel like no matter what they did, they couldn't win their campaign were so significant that we never tried this stunt again.
Hello! I have a question about Nualia and the prophecy she's supposed to deliver to the PCs when she's summoned by the ritual.
I've searched everywhere, but I can't find the explanation: how does Nualia even know about the 7 Dooms of Sandpoint? It's clearly explained on the Red Bishop's page that it's because of him that the villagers mistreated Nualia, notably through nightmares and rumors he spread. But was she aware of this attempt? I'm having trouble understanding how she found out. And since we're in the Age of the Lost Omens, in theory, no reliable prophecy can be made. So how did Nualia learn about the 7 Dooms threatening Sandpoint, and how does she know that the instigator has red wings?
Someone just asked this same question in a different thread. Copypastaing my response from there to here.
The dead know strange secrets. She knows about it because her soul is linked to the region, and after she died, she learned hidden information about dooms and the like, as part of her own legacy associated with the original dooms and the fact that she, among many others, had been indirectly manipulated by the main villain of Seven Dooms for Sandpoint.
EDIT: It's meant to be creepy and strange and mysterious, and to lean into the idea that the dead know things the living don't. Akin to real-world spiritualist stuff (be it hokum or real) used to find out things that are apparent on the far side of death that the living don't understand.
I’ve read the section on the ritual to summon Nualia’s spirit several times.
What’s the explanation for why Nualia knows about the seven coming dooms?
The dead know strange secrets. She knows about it because her soul is linked to the region, and after she died, she learned hidden information about dooms and the like, as part of her own legacy associated with the original dooms and the fact that she, among many others, had been indirectly manipulated by the main villain of Seven Dooms for Sandpoint.
We haven't revealed it officially but we've dropped a few clues here and there. WHY he died is easy—when we advance timelines, we often shift things around like who's in charge or dead or whatnot to keep the setting from feeling too static. Don't remember exactly what we might have said about him though, between stuff that we wrote years ago, stuff that just came out I'm not aware of, or so on...
Back in the 80s when you were young, and especially in the 90s, how often did you DM just all-the-way HOMEBREW stuff, and how much did you play IN Greyhawk, IN Faerun, IN Krynn or other published settings? Did you create all your own stuff but often (or some other adverb) place it *in* the Flanaess? Were you told to put "Headless" in The Crystalmists near Sterich and involve Orcus behind your Eldrua NPC-BBEG? That kind of stuff.
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One More:
Is Korvosa based heavily (or 'somewhat,' again, the adverb of your choice) on your Scuttlecove?
Many THANKS!!!!
I started building my homebrew setting in 6th grade, a year after I first played the game, beginning with adventures (which required settings for context) before I realized that there were actual campaign settings out there already. Took me a weirdly strange amount of time to realize exactly what this "World of Greyhawk" thing was—I thought for a while that it was a different game than D&D since it came in a box with different trade dress (but also for a while didn't realize that D&D and AD&D were technically different games too—lots of confusing moments when I tried to understand what was going on in "Queen of the Demonweb Pits" when I only had the basic and expert set and the Monster Manual to reference!).
With the exception of running the original series of Dragonlance adventures for my younger sister as those adventures were coming out, all of the games I ran in up to college were homebrew. Once I got to college and was in an environment with several orders of magnitude more people interested in gaming, that probably dropped to 75% homebrew and a mix of Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, and Planescape. Then, once I moved up to the Pacific Northwest, the homebrew side kicked up a bit more as I played in homebrew games run by Jim Butler, Julia Martin, and a few others at WotC, and started running my own post-apocalyptic setting as a second homebrew.
When I ran homebrew games, I made significant use of using published adventures from Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms and generic settings to transition the plots into campaigns I run. I do that still to this very day when I run games set in Golarion (which I have the weird situation of it STILL sort of being a homebrew setting).
"Headless" was an adventure I was asked to write by Chris Perkins based solely on the title. He asked me to pitch him an adventure with that title and that's what I came up with. (Side note: That was the first time in 3rd edition D&D that stats for anything like a deity showed up in print—My stat block for Orcus in there I hear kinda got Chris in a bit of hot water because the D&D team was "jump scared" by the publication of a demigod stat block when they weren't quite ready for it... ha!) But as far as I remember, the plot and NPCs and setting for Headless was all mine.
Korvosa is not based on Scuttlecove at all. It's based on a city from my homebrew called "Qel-Vasa" that I renamed because I had fallen out of love with using the letter Q and not following it up with a u in a lazy way to make the word feel more "fantasy." (The gray maidens, Queen Ileosa, the Red Mantis, and several other plot points first introduced in "Curse of the Crimson Throne" also came from this city and a campaign I ran back in college.)
Scuttlecove is its own export from my homebrew, but grimdarked up significantly to serve as its tie in with the Book of Vile Darkness product.
I don’t see any prophecy that could hint at Vaultlines so far but then again, we don’t know much about the AP yet.
We are well into the post-Stolen Fate era where we're publishing Adventure paths and adventures that we had no idea we'd be doing when we were publishing Stolen Fate.
Not lately, no. When I go on longer drives I do enjoy the various Mr. Ballen podcasts, but haven't done a big drive lately, ever since his podcasts shifted to Sirius. But yeah, lately I just don't drive regularly enough for long enough stints that podcasts make sense, and when I'm not driving I'd rather watch movies/TV/YouTube, read, write, or game with my free time.
I’d like to try a Cthulhu story and see if I like it …
In your opinion, what are the best two or three Lovecraft Cthulhu stories?
Is there perhaps a really good collection I could pick up?
My favorite Lovecraft story is "At the Mountains of Madness" but that's probably not the best one to start on.
"The Dunwich Horror" and "The Colour Out of Space" are both pretty solid starters, though. "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is pretty great also. And "The Call of Cthulhu" is solid, of course. So is "The Whisperer in the Darkness."
More than two or three, but it's hard for me to narrow things down there!
Any collection that has all of the above is a good one to pick up. Annotated ones can be helpful too, if you're looking for more info. S. T. Joshi (one of the best Lovecraft scholars out there) has annotated several of them.
"Return of great evils thought lost to time" is indeed about Revenge of the Runelords.
"The sun destroyed" thing and the "countless spirits shrieking" ones haven't gone anywhere yet.
As for prophecy working or not... again, the reason we chose this theme for Golarion from the start is twofold:
1) Prophecy is super cliched and it's a trope we just didn't want popping up all the time in the game, especially considering that the PCs would be the targets of all those "chosen one" prophecies and that gets old FAST.
2) Since it's an interactive game and a team-effort with player agency, prophecy tropes don't really have a place in the game anyway, since it feels like railroading to be told at the start of the game what has been prophesied and then feels gross if the GM ends up forcing events to fit it or lessens the sense of accomplishment if at the end players are told "It was always going to end this way since it was foretold."
It has to be one of those impossible but actual coincidences, completely accidental and perhaps even unknown even after almost twenty years. But just in case,....
The name "Avistan" isn't possibly related to "Avestan" is it?
I was doing some initial pre-research for an upcoming campaign featuring Abaddon, Ahriman, & Apollyon and read that Ahriman was the principal Evil 'deity' of the ancient Persian era of "Avestan" and the ancient Avestan language / culture-society. Apparently the last time I included Ahriman in one of my campaigns was pre-Pathfinder / pre-Golarion because I didn't recognize "Avestan." I mean, it's gotta just be a coincidence.
But I'm curious, what is the naming history for Avistan?
Really, I am thrilled as, going into my pre-campaign-research I just wanted some Abaddon & Ahriman & Apollyon inspiration and a good campaign idea. But seeing the name "Avistan" in a whole new light, an easy connection to an apocalyptic campaign where the PCs have to stop those pesky NE *destructors* is going to be great fun.
As always, THANKS (in this case for just confirming a silly coincidence).
I didn't come up with "Avistan" so I can't say for sure. But many of us drew upon the ancient world I would say more for inspiration than the more modern medieval world.
What has been the most important change been lately to the design process of AP's? I know they are now single books but is there anything you want to elaborate on about either that change or another momentous change recently to the design process?
The switch to single books is the most important change. It impacts pretty much everything in some way, but perhaps the most exciting to me is that it potentially lets us do a single author Adventure Path now and then. Although that's not likely to happen often.
Wow, 5 days and no new posts on this thread? Based on the original thread, I was expecting 50 posts a day and a struggle to keep up!
To keep the questions rolling, James, what are your favorite TV shows you've watched this year? And any that were pleasant surprises (either had low expectations but were actually good, or simply weren't on your radar ahead of time)?
To be fair, the original thread's momentum took a hit when it went into retirement for several years.
TV shows I've been watching this year would be the following:
Fallout season 2
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season 2
From season 4
Daredevil: Born Again season 1 and 2
Game of Thrones: Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
For All Mankind season 4
The Last Drive In (FINAL SEASON lame)
Of those so far, I think The Last Drive In and From are my favorites, and Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is my second favorite.
No surprises so far this year, really. All of these are either known quantities or ones that I expected to enjoy.
Is XXX the NPC whose name was revealed at Paizo live? From a certain family close to Wes's cold black heart? (said lovingly)
OH! I guess so! Said XXX NPC is:
Spoiler:
Florin Kindler
Who is a new NPC I invented for Bastion of Blasphemies. She doesn't have a role in the Beginner Box. She MIGHT be name dropped in Troubles in Grayce, but a GM who wants to introduce her early as all of that would be best served waiting until all three products are out, I guess.
Still unlikely to happen. I wrote the player's guide a while back, but it still needs to be edited and laid out and then edited again, and those schedules are really disruptive to shift around. There's just going to have to be a few months of awkwardness for folks who are hoping to use Bastion's player's guide to start out the Unlit Star—Troubles in Grayce move... but THAT said, GMs absolutely should let players rebuild their characters to fit Bastion once that comes close, even if they've already played the other two. That sort of thing is less invasive and more fun than forcing a player to kill off or retire a character they've been playing just to make one that'll fit in better to the new game you're running.
ALSO: Those custom backgrounds for Bastion are for Bastion. They're not really meant to work for other stuff anyway, so you MIGHT have to deal with 4 levels of time-delay for that background to kick in before you reach Bastion, unless your GM rebuilds and reworks the other two to incorporate things better. Which is more work than just letting players adjust/retrain their characters for free between Troubles in Grayce and Bastion.
And there's also this paragraph I wrote for the Backgrounds section of the Bastion of Blasphemies Player's Guide to encourage GMs to do that:
"Also, if you’re starting Bastion of Blasphemies with an established character, speak to your GM about potentially swapping out your previous background for one of these choices. Provided you, your GM, and the other players are willing to stretch verisimilitude a bit in ret-conning this element of your character’s history, swapping out the background you chose at 1st level (perhaps as part of playing in the the adventure that came with the Beginner Box) for one of these more thematic options can go a long way toward making your Bastion of Blasphemies experience more fun. You can even use these backgrounds as selections when making your character for that first adventure, with your GM’s approval—in which case your association with XXX can carry through those first four levels of adventure in the background, only to step up to center stage as you begin this Adventure Path!"
That XXX is an NPC whose name I wasn't QUITE yet ready to reveal, alas.
In the end, if you and your group REALLY want to do this holistically, I suppose you'll just need to wait a few extra months for all three products to be out.
Speaking of older games like CoC, I've recently gotten back into Magic the Gathering after 20 years, and will soon play in a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game for the first time in over 20 years as well (yay retirement!)
James, what games haven't you played in a long time, but you'd love to get back into either as a one-shot or more regular play, if you had the time?
Call of Cthulhu. With Battletech a distant second.
I DO remember! The adventure had us all arriving at some famous person’s house / estate but the person couldn’t be found. Occasionally we would hear a strange, faint cry for help crackle over the radio …
Ah yes! Good times. And yeah... guns in Call of Cthulhu are good against the cultists and criminals... but against monsters, they tend to get you in more trouble since the combination of the false sense of power they grant and how many of the monsters just don't care about guns or are too armored or have so many hit points and so on that by the time you're shooting them, it's already too late. Never mind that just looking at them can blast sanity and now you have a crazed PC in the group with a gun...
Hello there, I hope you're doing well! I'm new to PF2E. I'm preparing for my very first AP and I am enamored with the Samsaran ancestry. I will be playing a Warpriest of Pharasma for Season of Ghosts and I've been pouring over all your old replies for (bonus!) insight into both the deity and the ancestry, alongside all the official content. What a happy coincidence for a new thread to have opened so recently! Thank you so much for fielding questions.
From what I understand, Samsarans within the reincarnation cycle always materialize after death as Samsarans (blue-skinned, pale-eyed humanoids). I was wondering how this overlaps with versatile heritages and whether or not reincarnated Samsarans could ever manifest heritage-specific features.
I've seen some creative players online roll with the "normal heritage features + blue skin/fur/leaves and pale eyes (if applicable)", but I was really interested to know what you imagined!
(For context, I was interested in running a Nephilim Samsaran and trying to conceive of how that would be possible. Maybe he got lost on the way to the Lake of Mortal Reflections. LOL.)
Yay! Its always great to hear about folks trying out Adventure Paths for the first time.
In my original take on samsarans, the vast majority are just that. Most of the NPC samsarans aren't going to be unusual when it comes to versatile heritages, but some might. Player characters are an exception. In home games, they're the rarest things out there—there's only like 4 per campaign at a time, after all! So if anyone's going to be unusual or strange when it comes to ancestry and heritage, it's them!
As for a nephilim samsaran, reincarnating as a samsaran on an outer plane might do it. Reincarnating when you have some sort of ancestral curse might do it? Getting exposed to some sort of otherworldly energy that transformed you AFTER you reincarnated might do it. Strange artifacts and capricious deities are also a great way to mix things up.
I was lucky enough to play in a Call of Cthulhu game run by James back at PaizoCon 10. It was late in the evening, so the atmosphere was perfect, and the game was really cool! And of course, James was an amazing GM!
I’ve wanted to get into an actual Call of Cthulhu ever since but haven’t had the opportunity yet …
This brings me to my question. I know there are many different flavors of the Call of Cthulhu game, as well as various versions. Do you have a favorite? Which version would you recommend to someone who might want to pick the game up and try running a game himself?
Thanks!
Hah! Rad! What was the adventure about and what character did ya play (if you can remember)? I've been bumping around a notion of writing up those Paizocon Call of Cthulhu adventures I ran at some point to share them but just never got around to it... yet.
With the exception of the most recent edition of Call of Cthulhu, all the previous editions are pretty much the same. Someone getting into the game today? I'd suggest going with the most recent one since it's easier to get. Personally, I like 2nd edition the best but that's 100% due to nostalgia, since it's the edition I started with.
There was a nasty little fey (or fey-adjacent aberration/humanoid?) in 3.X that Paizo had featured several times. At night, they'd drag individuals back to their burrows and perform excruciating experimentation, body horror torture. I believe they had a paralysis ability so you couldn't resist. Maybe too low level, but if upscaled to a society they'd work...if licensing allows. (Name starts w/ an M...?) Nasty things.
Wait...I do not want them in the Darklands!
Okay maybe as GM...if running a particular flavor of campaign. But I suppose that would apply to Fleshwarped monsters in general too.
Meenlocks. They're one of my favorite monsters. They were also never in the OGL, so we haven't been able to use them in adventures since we worked on the D&D magazines.
Dero are pretty much the things that have replaced that niche in the game now.
Just found the new reincarnated thread, and welcome back!
I know that 13 Omens is still very much a to be revealed game, but can you talk in general about your thoughts on it, excitement level, etc? Have you played it, run it, or have ideas you're excited to use with it (either in your home game or as future expansion products?)
I'd imagine that Paizo having a horror game would definitely be something you're highly invested in.
It's good to be back
As for my words on 13 Omens...
Spoiler:
SOON
My excitement level is something I can share. It's at a 13 on a scale of 1 to 10.
I like the idea of a werecreature AP. It’s an obvious box of tropes and i’m unsure why it hasn’t been done before now.
Because even though we've been doing Adventure Paths for decades, there's still plenty of untold stories to come. We can't do them all at once, plus also the it depends on the developer's interests to a certain extent as well when their "turn at bat" comes up for outlining an Adventure Path.
Both the werecreature-themed Adventure Path and the Nature vs. Civilization options intrigue me though, but there are others I'm also intrigued by that help to keep those on the back burner.
ALL THAT SAID Keep these requests coming, folks! We'll never do all of them, but we will do some of them!
You have mentioned that as DM (when not specifically playing to playtest a specific game for future publication), you generally prefer Sandbox-style and heavier DM-Improv -- with lots of notes,.... How much do you like giving the Players *full*-Sandbox direction, as opposed to more 'general'-Sandbox area?
I enjoy it, to a certain extent, but I always have an ongoing metaplot in the background... sometimes more than one. I do try to encourage the players to interact with the plot, but if they get distracted or go a different direction, that's fun too (and usually results in me adjusting the prior, abandoned plot for a new use).
That said, it depends on the group. The more sandboxy a game gets, the more option paralysis can set in. A lot of groups benefit from obvious direction in the story, since getting four or so players in one space whose characters all want the same thing is kind of rare. This is where having that metaplot handy to focus the characters helps.
I never do the "true" sandbox you describe. I always choose the setting and kind of game and plot, although I do try to set those things up so that my target players will enjoy them. Benefits of gaming with the same folks or with people you already know well, I guess.
EDIT: In hindsight, most of my "sandbox" games aren't remembered as such, because looking back on them, the players can see that the plot they felt was initially wide open was always aimed at the story they ended up playing. A few of these initial big plots disguised as sandboxes went on to inspire Pathfinder Adventure Paths, in fact, including "Curse of the Crimson Throne," "Serpent's Skull," "Seven Dooms for Sandpoint," and portions of "Wrath of the Righteous."
DOUBLE EDIT: Also all the Runelord stuff, now that I think on it, although the plot there was VERY different (originally, these bad guys came back as the result of a TPK in a highly modified version of White Plume Mountain had the PCs get resurrected and then forced to do a raid on an ancient temple of Desna on a remote island that they blew up and then escaped their geas and were able to go atone for destroying the temple by defeating those ancient evil wizards with names like Krune and Zutha and the like... Karzoug and Xanderghul being my versions of Vecna and Kas in those early days, while Alaznist was a drow lich).
We would be changing the name regardless since "pygmy" is problematic anyway. And the "...folk" construct is also one we're moving away from simply because it feels repetitive but also isn't what an ancestry would call themselves anyway, any more than we humans call ourselves apefolk or primatefolk. There's for sure room for more fungal ancestries in the Darklands though! Even potentially player options... I SUPPOSE... ;-P
For Adventure Paths, we generally aim to hand out about 2 times the treasure that the GM Core suggests on page 81 for each level of content. This is to account for the fact that not every group will find every bit of treasure, some treasure will be lost or sold or given away, and some treasure just won't be interesting to a group.
Even then, I more often hear feedback of there not being enough treasure, or in particular not enough weapon/armor runes at the expected levels, so I feel confident that 2 times the treasure is working well and also (at least in adventures I write and develop, ever since that weapon rune feedback back in the day for Malevolence) make sure that there's plenty of those runes in there for the PCs to get.
In the end, each table has their own preference for how much treasure feels right. Talk to your players and work with them to see what they find to be desirable, and don't forget to let them sell stuff they don't want or transfer runes as needed. But if you normally run homebrew games and your players are used to the amount of treasure (and the cadence of the encounters that expect their gear to be at a certain point), then for sure consider adjusting things.
I was just doing some old-school Planescape prep with some '90s-Sigil-converting-to-Galisemni design and the old Faction, 'Society of Sensation' inspired in me a connection to Pathfinder Gnomes and The Bleaching. (I can see Gnomes in Galisemni fighting off the Bleaching and becoming Sensates.)
Here's my question:
Do you remember some of the design origin and inspiration of Pathfinder Gnomes regarding the invention of The Bleaching? Creative origin, the muse, conversations, that kind of thing. Do you agree that Galisemni could make an excellent location for Gnome communities of individuals seeking to fight The Bleaching, or even futilely attempt at a cure?
THANKS in advance!!!
In the pre-Pathifnder days, we wanted to give all the core ancestries a new spin that set them apart from D&D, so that they wouldn't feel like they were just from Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms or whatever, but we ALSO wanted them to lean into their themes.
Elves got to be aliens who changed over time to match their surroundings.
Goblins got to be puppy eating singers.
And gnomes got the bleaching. I believe it was Mike McArtor who came up with this one—the idea that gnomes are vibrant energetic creatuers who love color and life, and that when they grew old they aged out of being colorful was a really neat concept. I think that any location that provides a lot of new experiences would be good for gnomes looking to fight against the bleaching. Galisemni's a good option for that, for sure, but so are most places on the once-upon-a-time-called-Chaotic outer planes, really.
Did Sedacthy's empire have a name or is it legit Sedacthy Empire?(I remember old days when sahuagin were mentioned to be part of powerful sahuagin empire xD)
Dunno. I wasn't a part of the creation of those fellas for Monster Core—a question for the Rules & Lore team I suppose!
The disconnect of an NPC staying a relatively static level or in a relatively unchanged position in lore when we don't immediately put them into an adventure verses the perception that there is a constant influx of new PCs who level up from 1st to 20th level in the span of a few months is a weird point of metacomplexity that we constantly struggle with. But in the end, until we DO do a story that focuses on that character, we generally try not to have them level up and do too much "off screen" because...
A) We try to make all our major villains interesting enough to be a BBEG for a potential story, but...
B) If we do and then we change their setup, that feels like a waste of effort on our part to have put that much work into that NPC in the first place when we could have just waited and presented them in their adjusted form later, closer to a point where we were confident we'd be able to put them on-screen in an adventure or a novel or something.
It's always worth remembering too that while we do try to set up a believable and compelling setting for everyone to adventure in... it's also not a setting meant to have every location move forward in a plot at an equal time in concordance to the passage of real-world time. That works a lot better for a non-interactive setting used by an author for their stories, or for a homebrew where the GM can keep the players invested as things move forward because they know what parts of the world their players are interested in.
Folks have been asking for a 1st to 20th level campaign for a while. That's not something we've been able to do for several years for production and sales related reasons, which I've gone into a lot elsewhere, but for this, the inaugural two all-in-one hardcover Adventure Paths it was important to me to set them up as a throughline that you could play from 1st to 20th level. It's very much the intent to play them this way, but they're also set up so that folks who only want to play one or the other can do that as well. And also set up as two separate books so that we COULD produce them on our schedule and not break banks (or backs) along the way.
Will for sure be watching feedback from folks once both are out to see if this version of producing a full 1st to 20th level experience is successful. Particularly interested in the sales of Hell's Destiny compared to Hellbreakers, and to feedback from folks as to whether they want a stronger connection between the two or the opposite.
And THAT said: it's also worth noting that the Fail Forward section in the GM Core is important, and it's a skill all GMs should develop. We can't anticipate every potential pain point a group has, and have to assume that most groups will be well-rounded when it comes to presenting adventures. If your group does something like has no representation for a specific skill or an entire category of ability-related skills, you as the GM need to adjust the adventure as appropriate so that it doesn't soft-lock your group out of progression as a result of their unexpected choices.
This is a big reason why we take the time to produce the free Players' Guides for Adventure Paths—we want to help players (and GMs!) to build characters that will fit in with the campaign they're about to start. Taking the mention above about Survival in Spore War—this skill is very important in that game (which has large sections that take place in the wild), which is why we listed it as "Strongly Recommended" in the list of skills for PCs on page 11 of the Player's Guide to that Adventure Path. While these are called "Player's Guides" the GM should read them as well to make sure that if they notice their players are, say, building characters that leave a gap in their expected abilities, the GM can step in during character generation to bring attention to this. Or if you're worried about spoilers or curtailing player freedom of choice, take note yourself to adjust the adventures before hand.
We really do want you all to have fun playing our adventures, and the Players' Guides are one of the best tools we have to try to ensure fun!
Feedback like this is super helpful; thank you! We're always working on improving our adventures, and getting feedback is one of the best ways to do so.
That said, to help increase chances of us seeing the feedback, it's best to post this sort of feedback for adventures in the Adventure Path or Adventure section of the forums, rather than in General Discussion. It's REALLY helpful to post it in the form of reviews or in a thread devoted to the adventure or Adventure Path in question. And it's also REALLY helpful to get feedback on more recent adventures—feedback on older things like Strength of Thousands is helpful, but sometimes that feedback is pre-outdated, with us already having taken steps to address the issue. (Not saying that's the case here, but the older a product is, the more likely it isn't as useful for us today to implement on adventures we're pubishing later in the year or beyond.)
One thing I make sure to do as well whenever I compile an old adventure or Adventure Path is to scour the boards for feedback just like this, but the boards are big and I don't look much beyond the actual adventure forums themselves, just to manage my own workflow, so a post like this in General Discussion would very likely be missed.
Again, thanks for all the feedback! Just trying to help direct it a bit more so it's more noticeable to us on the Narrative team.
With the pivot away from OGL demons that are WotC IP, it feels like a fun opportunity to have more demonic critters based on Golarion-specific lore like ties to Pazuzu or Socothbenoth or Dagon, which I've explored in the 'inconsequential critters' thread. Has that seemed like an option worthy of exploring, or just kind of derivative to you?
I do love the idea of just flat out replacing some OGL critters niches with similarly positioned beasties, like sahuagin with deep ones, or aboleth with krakens, but understand that this isn't to everyone's taste.
Yup, and we've already been exploring some of these. Deep Ones are in Monster Core 2, for example, and there's some new Pazuzu stuff back in Stolen Fate. Spore War had a LOT of new demon stuff in it. Socothbenoth, with his sexual violence themes, is unlikely to be someone we do much more with in Pathifnder, though.
With eight years' hindsight: any advice on a Return of the Runelords campaign?
I've just started running it (with a group that went through Rise and Shattered Star); the individual adventures are great but I'm slightly struggling with how to make the connections work. (e.g what do the heroes really gain from chasing down Thybidos)
My main advice would be to convert it to 2nd edition and play it with those rules. :-P (EDITED TO ADD: Note that since you're running this privately, not publishing it, you can mix and match OGL and Remastered rules. No need to swap out OGL monsters for remastered replacements!)
But apart from that, the first step I take whenever I'm prepping an old Adventure Path for revision is to go through the forums here, look around on Reddit, and elsewhere to make a big list of all the suggestions and pain points and applause folks have given it over the years. This helps me to figure out what parts work, what parts need fixing, and what parts could be expanded upon.
As for the "connections," don't worry about trying to make everything lead into everything. A lot of an Adventure Path is just about building an overall theme and expanding the world lore for players to discover (and of course, giving them things to do to earn XP and to find treasure). Make sure to chat with your players between sessions too; see what's working and what parts of the story they're interested in, and that can help you focus on what areas to bolster and what areas to just let pass by.
Zach Cregger, the writer/director of Weapons is working on a new Resident Evil movie? Are you excited for this?
No such thing as a question hog. ASK AWAY!!!
I did see Weapons. It was one of my favorite movies of the year. Funny and creepy and brilliant all at once. PLUS it helped represent horror wins at the Academy Awards—more horror movies became oscar winners this year than ever!
I also quite admired Barbarians.
I'm simultaneously kinda disappointed that Zach Cregger isn't doing more original horror and is getting on a franchise bus, but at the same time I think that franchise needs someone like Zach to step in. I personally don't have a lot of nostalgia attached to Resident Evil... but I do enjoy the games, and had a lot of fun recently with Resident Evil Requiem. PLUS the original inspiration for the entire franchise, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Sweet Home, is great.
All that said, yeah, I'm excited to see what he does with the next Resident Evil movie.
Thanks, James. I went ahead and ordered Tanabe's The Shadow Out of Time adaptation. Just got it a few hours ago, and look forward to reading it.
Excellent! He's got a lot of others too, so track them down if you enjoy Shadow out of Time! He's got Dunwich Horror coming out later this year I think.
The OEM (Office of Expectations Management) rates this project a 2 out of 10 as a result.
Sad, but expected. Though I imagine it would be quite difficult to do Second Darkness without the drow. Although it could potentially be just about a city or cult of evil Ayndilar elves.
Replacing the drow would be one of the tricky parts that requires a fair amount of rewriting, but it's also the primary reason I would love to do this. It wouldn't just be a "cult of evil Ayndilar elves." It's a big enough change to not have drow that it needs to be something better than just a find/replace drow for ayndilar. Other things I'd love to tackle in a reworking of this would be:
Spoiler:
1) A better transition between book 2 and book 3 that'd present a new adventure to close out the Riddleport section, give closure to the gaming hall story, and transition the story more logically into the next section.
2) A full revision of the personality and politics of the elves of Kyonin, so that they don't behave like Tolkien's/D&D's haughty isolated xenophobes and behave more like Pathifnder elves, which also makes it more palatable to the players to be helping them and makes the Winter Council seem more outlandish and evil. This would likely result in at least a level's worth of additional brand new adventure content in the first half of book 5.
3) LOTS of other ripple effect adjustments due to OGL changes, particularly when you work on demon or aboleth or Darklands stuff beyond the drow themselves.
4) And in the end, I'd want it to go to 20th level. The original, as with all of the 3.5 Adventure Paths, topped out at about 16th level. And even beyond that, 2nd Edition adventures require more content to level up anyway—the XP churn was faster in 3.5. This'd mean adding probably about 5 levels of new content, split between the gap between books 1 and 2, the start of book 5, and likely further expanding book 6.
5) All of that, plus revise the drow to whatever replaces them.
It'd be a challenge. A FUN challenge, but a challenge nevertheless.
If I had all the power I'd probably do a Second Darkness revisit, for sure. I'd probably end up having to rewrite a lot of it—whether that'd be me doing that myself (as well as writing the missing adventure that bridges books 2 and 3), or hiring authors to help out (although some of those who worked on the original back in the 3.5 days aren't with us anymore, alas, or might not be comfortable with 2E or interested/available) would be part of it. Regardless, it would for sure take longer than most other revisions but still less time to do than a "from scratch" Adventure Path.
All of which combines into a "I personally would enjoy the challenge and I think it'd be worth it to me, but I don't know that it's worth it to Paizo and the customer base, and we don't have the resources to do this anytime soon anyway." (With "soon" here standing in for "within the next few years" at the minimum.)
The OEM (Office of Expectations Management) rates this project a 2 out of 10 as a result.
As a designer (actual Creative Director), when you get to DM your own Homegame on your own time (and the prep-time for such), do you find yourself only working on Pathfinder-canon material? Really, what I'm asking is if you ever go back and grab (for example) N1 "Against the Cult of the Reptile God" or maybe even Dungeon 41 and "The Lady of the Mists" -- or perhaps even "The Razing of Redshore" or "Twilight's Last Gleaming" or "Headless" and, for inspiration and nostalgia, DM some reruns at your table -- re-written / re-imagined reruns? Maybe even find a great place in Avistan to place "The Ghost Tower of Inverness" or a Gate to Rel Mord in The Flanaess? .... Or do you find yourself exclusively sticking to the world you and your colleagues have designed?
THANKS!
I generally mix things up. I like running games that are more sandboxy than they are "pathy," and have a LOT of stuff on hand to pull from for the campaign, based on how the players go. Sometimes, that might be an adventure from Pathifnder or D&D. Sometimes it might just be an old map. Sometimes I might make the adventure up whole-cloth as I go. I almost never fully write things out, and run the games improv style with whatever monster/NPC stats I might need handy. But I keep lots of notes, so that later, if/when I wanna turn them into something publishable, I have a framework to build from.
Interesting you mention "Against the Cult of the Reptile God", in particular...
Spoiler:
...Because I ran that adventure for a campaign I was running for folks at Paizo in 2019–2020 (before said campaign eventually went into VTT mode during the pandemic only to fizzle out, alas). I ended up mostly just using the map and maybe 75% of the encounters, and reflavored the whole thing as a xulgath cult headquarters where they worshiped a certain demon lord and dwelt below a strange old ruin named Rusthenge. Which, of course, went on to get rewritten entirely by Vanessa when I hired her to take the Rusthenge and demon lord aspect out and start things over for that adventure. (ALSO from the same campaign, the map of the nearby town I used was an old map of Diamond Lake I drew back in college that didn't end up being the one used for "Age of Worms" since Erik wanted to do his own map of the town, and ALSO from the same campaign that's where I first threw the haunted house that ended up being in Malevolence at players). So that campaign used all three: Repurposed old adventures, old maps, and brand new content.
Oh that's a nostalgia trip I wasn't expecting. I haven't prepared questions!
So what is your favorite idea you never got to do? (like something that had to get scrapped or otherwise figured out "Nah I can't actually do that, but it'd be cool" rather than something that got shelved for later)
I'm wary of answering this, since sometimes those ideas I've been wanting to do forever but never got a chance to be a thing actauly DO become things. See "Bastion of Blasphemies" for a recent example, and there's some other stuff I'm eager to share that I've been working on but can't talk about yet.
One thing that I suppose I could nominate here would be that I never got to finish up the Demonomicon of Iggwilv articles for Dragon Magazine. There were still some demon lords that I was looking forward to doing entries for, particularly Obox-ob or Juiblex, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not gonna be going back to doing more of those ever.
I always enjoyed checking out your prior thread. Welcome back!
How often do you get to play now a days?
Any good video games recently?
I'm playing as a player in a highly homebrewed weekly 1E Pathfinder game on Sunday afternoons, and am running a 2E Pathfinder game for folks here at work every other Thursday after work (although the last month of the game's schedule got savaged a bit, alas). I kind of have potential ideas of maybe someday turning that game into an adventure—that's where Rusthenge and Seven Dooms for Sandpoint and Malevolence came from, and to a lesser extent Curse of the Crimson Throne and Serpent's Skull back in the day.
As for video games:
Resident Evil: Requiem was great
Slay the Spire 2 is glorious
Chapter 5 of The Long Dark's Wintermute campaign is a lot of fun and is the current obsession.
Northern Journey was lots of fun until I got to an annoying hanglider sequence near the end that kinda made me quit in frustration.
But Nioh 3 is the one that I played the most obsessively recently, I suppose.
And I wanna get back to Fallout 76, now that Bigfoot's in the mix!
Have you read any good Cthulhu Mythos books or short stories lately, or seen any such movies/TV shows?
Always! Hmm. Let's see... on the movie side from this year alone, the best mythos adjacent things I've seen would be:
"Iron Lung" (A+) followed by "The Deep Dark" (B–)
I suppose "Who Can Kill A Child" (A) could be argued as Lovecraftian, since it's about an evil apocalyptic force on an island that if it escapes to the mainland would bring the end of civilization, but it's maybe more folk horror or societal horror?
On the books/short story side, been jumping back and forth from a bunch of different authors including Frank Belknap Long and Carl Jacobi (both of whom I just picked up GIANT omnibus hardcovers of). The latest anthologies from John Langan ("Lost in the Dark") and Laird Barron ("Not a Speck of Light") have some fun cosmic horror, and I just started reading some of Attila Veres' short stories and they're GREAT. The best actual Lovecraft thing I've recently read was Gou Tanabe's manga adaptation of "The Shadow out of Time." That thing is DENSE—with words and art—in a good way!
Years ago, an AMA style thread here in the off-topic discussions was a pretty sprawling and fun place for folks to chat with me about stuff, but I ended up bringing the thread to an end during the pandemic when the internet got extra spicy.
But I miss it! Dunno if folks are still interested in asking questions here, but if they are, ask away and I'll provide answers...
...but not to anything/everything. There's a reason why this thread lives in the "Off-Topic Discussions" part of the boards, after all.
RULES
1) I won't be answering rules questions at all.
2) I will answer questions about Pathfinder lore or adventures, but those will NOT be "official" Paizo answers; just my take/opinion based on my preference and history with the topic. If you want official answers, please direct those questions to the on-topic thread for that line or product. If it's on a product that I've worked on, I'll answer those questions there.
3) Don't ask about how Aroden died.
4) Have fun and keep your questions fun and positive and entertaining!
Creative Director
