Jess Emerson's page

I have been away from Pathfinder for a few years now and this was my return to GM'ing for a resurrected group of mine. We kicked off War for the Crown over a long weekend of face-to-face sessions in our home town this past weekend. They got all the way through the escape room and collected the pay-to-live nobles under the senate (aka our d-----bags of holding).

It was a weekend of laughs and GREAT roleplay. Intro-ing an adventure path with heavy social interactions and a really fun escape room scenario is brilliant and needs to be a model ... just sayin. Under the Senate, the animate hair was BY FAR the most fun I've had in a long time running an encounter. My players were all SO freaked out by the thought of a creepy little hermit crab-like hair ooze living in a wig. They slashed the bajeezus out of that poor Wig of Disguise while the off-action players all chanted "KILL IT KILL IT OMG KILL IT!" and are hoping to employ a good enchanter/wig-maker when they escape because they were SO excited to find a wig of disguise and then the fighter pulled it on his head without so much as a question and ... whispering murder commands.

Thank you Crystal and Thurston. Such a great romp!

@CapeCodRPGer, As far as the custom dice being a barrier to entry.

I've found that with WFRP 3rd Edition and also with EotE (beta book + the iPad app for the dice) new players have a lot less of the pointless "ewwwww custom dice different from my other custom dice" baggage. I have a long time gamer pal that refuses to even have FFG's new Star Wars game mentioned in his pressence. Meanwhile I've nabbed two entirely new gamers that took to the dice as easily as anyone can while learning a game. They have more hangups now about branching out into d20 or numeric dice-pool games like Cortex Plus because of the binary pass-fail result.

Re: Cthulhu

Honestly, I'm going to be looking for the "Consumes 1dX investigators/adventurers per round" line in its statblock

This. The rest of the stat block should just be gibberish, lunatic ravings, and random mashing of the keyboard (which will probably end up being Polish so Gorbacz will become the official translator of forbidden stats).

It's interesting how "omg dumbzorz" people get about anything south of 10. Is it the (-) modifier? Sure they aren't the brightest candle in the window at 7, but they are a far cry from people coming from miles around to gawk, or Hodor levels of cognitive deficiency. They are diminished at 7, though. Enough that an average intelligence individual would quickly realize that "oh, that's why you work at the quarry smashing big rocks into little rocks."

:Edit: And what Mr. Hunter wrote. Though I'd put Homer above Peter in the intelligence race :-)

Jedi, Sith and the Force are an essential part of Star Wars. Without them, it's just another generic science fiction universe and not even a particularly interesting one. One could just as well watch Andromeda.

To you (and many many others), but the Star Wars fanbase is larger than the population of most countries. So there's going to be a lot of "what is Star Wars to you" agreement and disagreement on any front.

For my tastes, I like the iconic aliens, worlds, space ships and droids, the amalgamation of a lot of well worn stories, and serial media styling more than anything force related (not that I mind lightsabers and force lightning by any stretch). But my preferences are bonkers to anyone that holds a legitimate 180º view to mine about Star Wars, and that's cool to me. That being said, 1313 would have appealed to a lot of people (enough to matter at least), BUT I doubt Lucas Arts of 2013 had the chops to actually make a good game of it.

So I'd rather it was taken out back and puppy-coffined by Disney, than allowed to arrive way over budget and...kinda suck. I'd personally be over the moons excited if they put out an LA Noire investigation game set in the Star Wars universe. But for the time being I'll happily accept that lightsabers are more popular on consoles and bide my time slashing away until someone decides to make a game targeted at my heart.

If the base DC was 0 wouldn't you eventually hit negative DCs? The description of Invisibility shows the base DC to be 20 pretty plainly, imo. Then you tack on +20 to pinpoint, and/or adjust based on the table. It looks like Grick has the right of it to me.

It's because of me. When I stop playing 3.X and its various mutations and offspring, the entire thing will come to an apocalyptic end.

You're welcome planet Earth!

Everyone knows that Russian accents come from Osirion on Golarion. The Taldans have a distinct Manchurian lilt to their speech, and Varisians speak Bocce like all good moisture evaporators.

Legacy of Fire would be my vote. It is fairly tightly focused in terms of player direction, the monsters are monstrous, and it will give them a pretty healthy taste of the fantastic. Kingmaker and Jade Regent are probably legit from a topical standpoint, but I think Legacy of Fire is a better bang-for-the-buck with youngsters.

YMMV

The original ninja turtles looked NOTHING alike. Raphael had sais AND a red headband. Donatello had a bo staff AND a purple headband. I mean, that's like Amos and Andrew different!

Also, without Corey Feldman as the voice of Donatello...well those are some big shoes to fill for any would-be "real" actor. Such as Underwear boy or Megan Faux

I'm assuming that the ninja turtle costume/CGI will make any blonde underwearness irrelevant...since actual ninja turtles are hard to come by. In terms of acting chops, Bay's scripts and plots don't exactly require Daniel Day Lewis. Megan Fox will do far more damage imo...cause she is just the worst of the worst.

Bay's intention to have the ninja turtles be aliens is far more worrying than any casting decisions.

Woah. Don't read this thread on cold medicine. That being said, I'm pretty sure that the consensus lying just beneath the Stygian depths of the last five pages is:

Okay, this series of images just proves that we need a side scroller like Symphony of the Night for Pathfinder/Golarion.

I am running Rise of the Runelords again with the anniversary edition. I like the added bits of story and assorted gristle that was added to help bridge some of the story gaps between the separate adventures. But I went a bit further in Skinsaw Murders.

I never really liked Justice Ironbriar as written. He's a super secret member of a murder cult, and his only real claim to fame (as written) is being dominated by a lamia matriarch. I decided to make some meta plot modifications to better support a bit of self respect for ol' Ironbriar.

Xanesha came to town and assumed the guise of a wealthy, single Magnimaran noblewoman so that she could have access to the greediest souls in the city. She easily infiltrated, murdered and assumed the identity of a prominent lady. Then, of all the men to court her, Ironbriar was the most interesting AND greedy. When she discovered that he was also the secret head of a murder cult she couldn't believe how well things were playing to her favor.

Justice Ironbriar and Lady Dumerek were wed in a lavish ceremony in front of all the finest people of the city of monuments. On their wedding night, Xanesha revealed her true form and flat out murdered Justice Ironbriar...consigning his rune-marked soul to fuel the release of her master. Then she replaced him with a doppelganger that she had requisitioned (I added some levels of ninja to punch the fellow up a bit). The doppelganger version of Ironbriar is what we see throughout the adventure as written since the real one was dead before events begin. Thus Xanesha gets to appear as the wife of Ironbriar to move through town in the finest circles of influence. And by night/secret she is in control of a murder cult that has begun preying upon the greedy souls of Magnimar.

She has also begun replacing a few other individuals with doppelgangers and faceless stalkers to suit her needs. I haven't gotten to the point of needing them yet, but I figure it gives me some "oh my gosh he's a doppelganger!" reveal if I decide I need one for an NPC.

SO when the players eventually make it to the sawmill, they will be facing my Doppelganger ninja and his duped cronies which should be a bit more exciting than the clerical version of Ironbriar (besides Norgorber is going to be loving all this secrecy and murder so it's not like he's going to want to intervene at any point...Xanesha is awesome in his book). If Doppelganger Ironbriar can get away to harass the players or discredit them later on...all the better...he'll probably eat it at the sawmill though.

Once the players defeat or drive off Ironbriar's doppelganger, Xanesha is going to be next on the list when they find out that Lady Ironbriar is not what she claims. Sure she could just hang at the clock tower and kill the PCs, but anyway you look at it her plans here could be well and truly humped. If Xanesha gets a chance to spread the tale of her "husband's" untimely death at the hands of the PCs whilst keeping his murder cult affiliations secret she'll gladly do it to help cover her escape from Magnimar (if she lives that is).

OH, and Scarecrow will be assembled from parts of the REAL Justice Ironbriar and some of the other recent greedy murders under Xanesha's belt. You see, Scarecrow and Aldern are simply research projects being used by one of the most effed up critters in the region...Xanesha.

I wanted to trump up Ironbriar's meta plot involvement beyond simple Domination, and I think the above changes are easy to work in without requiring a major re-write of any of the in-game action. It just shifts some of the motivation and background a bit.

As always YMMV

Warner Bros.'s Coyote is probably among the greatest inspirations for silent image use (both successful and disastrous). Of course that dirty Roadrunner cheats like crazy and always seems to make his saves, and counter with phantasms, figments and illusions of his own.

This goes into similar territory as "...I need to capture and imprison the PCs..."

If you are bound and determined to go through with your intention in the OP azureheart, this is one of those moments where you let the most agregiously affected players (paladins, druids if they are losing all N in their alignmebt, etc) see behind the scenes so that they can work with you when the in-game action starts. That way you can work out a situation with those players, such as what Banzial went through. If you can't trust those players to work with you to pull off your desired event sequence gracefully, you really should consider not doing it.

A snappy picture in a forum thread is no more likely to grab my money than an external link to said snappy picture. Clicking is hard, but the increased exercise is worth it in the long run. My pointer finger is quite a fearsome thing because of it.

Meanwhile, Paizo actively promotes 3PP products and the various product pages I've sifted through this morning seem to have pictures of the products on them.

I guess all I'm saying is that 3PP's aren't getting less of my money now for some lack of information or advertising. And I don't think that anyone would get more of my ducats for the addition of embedded images and video on forum threads.

But I'm only an aging minority amongst consumers these days, so I am willing to accept that my habits aren't keeping up with the times.

Herbo wrote:

A Goblin's Chance in a Library - Not bloody likely to succeed

This one in particular had me laughing at work. Bunch of people looking at me like I'd gone crazy.

Glad to be of service :-) If you liked the first bit here are a couple more. I'll spoiler them in case people'd rather get on with more firey cursing and such.

I always enjoyed derogatory labels and names of erstwhile germane or typically glossed-over things. And other bits of slang that add a bit of color even when they aren't outright curses or negative terms.

Such as (all props and original credit due to Messers, Steve Darlington, Magnus Seter, Rob Swallow and Dan White; downloaded HERE and partially regurgitated, somewhat bastardized and generally mangled below by me):

And I want her to play, so...

You need to come to grips with just how important it is that this person plays in your game. They have currently set their price at "give me what I want or I am Disco." You've already offered a compromise and had it tossed back at you.

Character Generation is the most happy-go-lucky time in many roleplaying groups. If they are being this difficult before the game even starts?

I refer to these types of players as the Honey Badger.

Best of luck

:Edit: What Jeven said. The Hungry Storm is the issue in particular you will want, as the gazetteer is pretty fething cool.

Until then, here are some much less impressive wordy answers to your OP Klaus.

From Avistan to Tian Xia it is in the neighborhood of 3000 miles from the Rimethirst Mountains to the Wall of Heaven. From Thremyr's Shield to Tashen Yakuta (the perpendicular measurement) is something like 2000ish miles. The Crown of the World region does include the North Pole, and there is a 1500 mile x 1500 mile donut hole of polar ice cap in the center of the region. The north pole itself is the location of the Nameless Spires.

You can still use knowledge local to gather information.

Yeah, know local is pretty powerful. so powerful it makes you think logically it shouldn't be that great, since it says local, not everyplace civilized. Should only apply to one region/nation at most, right? But no, it applies equally well everywhere. GM's may houserule the DC's higher, but in PFS play at least I've never seen that happen.

To be able to also identify humanoids with it? Bordering on broken now.

If you're still talking about your Game of Thrones campaign, this dovetails nicely with the ranger's FE discussion we were having. Same 4 or 5 geographic regions. ID humanoid is ID house (basically get knowledge nobility as a perk for nerfing know local.) Gather info might still work in other places, but the character would have to get in contact with somebody from their home network operating in the city, so the DC should be higher or at least RP should be involved. Want to be equally knowledgeable everywhere? Take all 4 or 5 know local regions. Which if there aren't going to be planar creatures, many aberrations, monstrous humanoids, etc., some of the other knowledges will be less important or even entirely useless, so splitting know local into 4 or 5 regions could be a skill point counterbalance to eliminating or combining some of the others.

If you want to limit the regions/countries/towns/etc that K:local will work in for a given character, then you could easily hack it to work something like Linguistics, where they get a certain number of "locals" they can know based on their ranks.

You could:
* Make a timeline/eventline of "stuff" going on in the background (or direct action scenes) during the siege. Depending on how tight the time frame is you could tie the event progression to player actions (when X happens, advance to J point on the time line of events), or a flat rate of time (rounds, days, minutes,etc).
* Adopt your favorite mass combat rules (any system will do, even shooting rubber bands at action figures from accross the room to represent the fall of entire units...anything goes) and slug it out between the defenders and besieging army.
* Adopt a narrative approach to the siege, with player actions focused into various encounters, whose outcome is designed to help or hinder the progress of the siege.
* Some combination of the previous.
* Any other ideas that keep things lively and fun because sieges should be memorable.
* OR, just skip past the siege if you can't come up with something you like, and let the PCs know how it worked out.

It's not CE, it's CN. "Fireball em all and let the gods sort em out" is a character type with a long and storied history in RPGs. But as the player of that type of character you have to manage your 'in character' decisions to fit the actual fun of the group sitting at the table with you. Otherwise you become a thing for them to work against, and that way lies so very much drama and bum-hurtedness.

Think about it like this. Pick any character from fiction that you like. Do they spend every page, pannel, second of screen time doing the exact thing they are known or stereotyped for? Pretty much Pikachu is the only one I can think of that reliably shoots lightning out his bum and says...unerringly..."pikachu." If that is what you are going for...groovy. But many people are going to become irritated by that.

Elle Woods is in interesting character because she's not an airhead, even though she talks and walks like one. She uses that to disarm people...a very canny use of her charms.

Your character can still be a think-later, act-now type of character of great renown and fame/infamy without literally fireballing every dungeon room before any characters (ie players) have a chance to play their characters. It's not a game of slap-jack or whack-a-mole. You don't get bonus points or special abilities for being the first one to jam their character concept into every.single.situation. You could do something like shoot a random lightning bolt at a bat on a cavern ceiling ONCE per game session and your character would be known as the loose canon. Blowing up rooms full of innocents and cooking things alive in bondage is something that comes around rarely. You want those moments to un-nerve the other characters and keep them guessing. NOT..."quick someone restrain Dingbat the Wizard Queen so that we can talk to the prisoners before they are on fire."

TLDR; It's all about feeling the gameroom, and learning when to stop acting "in character" to preserve the actual fun of the game everyone else is playing. Heck, I'm still trying to balance that one out after 25 years of rolling polyhedrals.

As long as everyone is okay with the learning process...let mistakes happen from time to time. If you are flat stumped on how to move the game forward then hit the index at the back of the Core Rule-book. But if you have a modifier or rule on the tip of your tongue and the action is flowing, characters are being entertainingly role-played and the night is getting late? Let it ride "I can't remember at the moment guys...why don't you just give me a DC [Fill in the blank] check or [type] saving throw." It's okay to flub over things like reach, attacks of opportunity, lighting/environment modifiers, and critical hit damage. But when you get to those points where you are winging it to keep the game moving, write yourself a note or make a mental one to check back during your next snack/meal break. We've all had those moments where a tense bit of GM arbitration goes down, everyone moves on grudgingly/happily/etc and then later on the GM comes back from a bathroom break going, "oh man I totally hosed you Terry...your character could totally have done [that thing]." Rather than agonizing over it, use those situations to better your game. After each session take a few minutes to do some post-game chat with your players (especially if you are all new to the game) so that you can come up with rules confusions, gripes, or other notable topics. That way you can maintain the process of learning the game together. Afterward you'll have some idea of what sorts of questions to ask or look for answers to on the forums

TLDR; Learning the game can be part of the game too.

Put little post-it sticky tabs on the bestiary pages you will need, or use a digital rules interface if you have one. Train your brain to pick out the relevant information in a stat-block for an NPC or monster at a glance to minimize "I'm going to...uh...hit...uh..wait...oh that's cool...I'm going to uh...oh man that's kinda lame...uh...I'm gonna smite you Terry!"

As far as RotRL in particular (or any pre-written adventure arc), I recommend reading the adventure module you will be running...twice. Prior to doing any prep for any sessions I'd recommend at least skimming the whole adventure path to get a feel for how it's going to progress.

Have your players read the Players' Guide. Then sit down and talk out character concepts as a group if you can. You want to make sure you fill out the classic personalities and functional roles of a [Fill in your favorite fictional team of characters]. If everyone shows up wanting to be the haunted anti-hero...it's going to be hard on you to motivate them with the adventure as written. And functionally, a party composed entirely of fighters or rogues is going to have some issues completing certain challenges along the way. The group is going to be playing together for a long time, they may as well coordinate at the outset to make sure their concepts and character types don't stomp all over each other or the adventure path at hand "we all want to be monks, and our dearest dream is to burn Sandpoint to the ground!..".

Swing by the RotRL forums and check out the individual stickied adventure module threads. They have a LOT of compiled suggestions, workarounds, horror stories, success stories, customized/revised encounters, and other golden tidbits in them. There are even MP3's of delightful nerds singing goblin songs...gold I tells ya!

The original Conan movie is still in a regular rotation for me. It got me to read the Robert E Howard stories as a wee teenie bopper. Even though I ended up preferring Howard's Conan, I still like that the original content inspired a cool movie that I enjoy to the present. I see the two as topically related, but not intermingled...so I can get excited about a new Ahhhnold Conan without worrying whether it is going to evoke anything like "true" Conan (as if any such version exists in 70+ years of non-Howard pastiches, hack jobs, comics, paper backs and more)

The 2011 Conan movie captured some of the visual styling and pulpy brutality of Howard's creation, but it wasn't interesting or fun to watch (imo).

So...bring on another "Viking" movie version of Conan! However, I'm not sure how I feel about the "brilliant" (dripping with sarcasm) minds and check-books that brought us Wanted, and the last four Fast and Furious movies being capable of more than generating another movie that features marketable actors and *black out for two hours until the hurting stops.*

Still, I'll probably approach the new Arnold Conan the same way I have the Expendibles movies (ie invest in the punching, shooting, exploding and one-liners).

I'll bite. Here's a pulled-out-the-bum rendition of a

@DSMRT

It was surprisingly entertaining, for something written by an 11 year old!

I'm of the opinion that more kids should be involved with the writing of RPGs. Too many of us grew up, got technical degrees, and have started turning games into C++ programming and workflow spreadsheets. If 1000 monkeys typing on 1000 typewriters could churn out the world's greatest novel. Surely a few 11 year olds shouting "no make the explosions bigger!" and "I want a sea-doo that transforms into a puppy with a canon on its head!" could give us a Transformers game worthy enough to shake the very pillars of Cybertron.

Geeze...this ring deserves to simply be called The Ring. Complete with widened eyes and raised eyebrows whilst invoking its name.

Don't forget to queue up Camille Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre" for the Dance Macabre fight as recommended in the side bar.

We don't need laws to regulate internet piracy. We need people to regulate themselves and influence the people they come into contact with. That's the idea behind any grass roots movement to change a dominant paradigm.

As the peasant railgun scenario shows...there is a lot we can do if we break our actions down to us and the people on either side of us in one round of combat.

Justifying piracy as some sort of legit punkrock move against crappy copyright legislation is sorta goofy. It's like having a sore foot and then crapping in your best friend's Nikes in retaliation to the foot that hath caused you so much pain.

China is China. Without sidetracking into a collegiate level Chinese history course...we have to add in the wrinkle of China being used by Western World Powers for a considerable amount of time. Therefore their entrenched business values reflect the darker side of Western Expansionist regimes as well as the significant cultural valleys that divide us (as different a cultural evolutionary path as Apple and Linux).

Now that China's leadership group (essentially plutocrats cloaked in more widely dissembled Chinese Nationalistic images) is capable of having influence on the entire global economy due to their near total domination of the people in their country as well as being able to control a staggering quantity of the make and manufacture of the world's "stuff." Their time in the sun has been a long time coming from their point of view. Unfortunately, the decision makers amongst them don't seem to be as concerned over the means to their ends (which includes environmental devastation and horrendous violations of human rights).

In essence, China is poised to make sure that Western Powers reap what they sowed for the last 200 years in Asia. If they have to pave their roads in the bones of their people to do it...I wouldn't put it past them. And the real twister? Due to multiple generations of propaganda as well as crushing control on the flow of information (restricted access to things like literacy for example)...the workers suffering in the offending industrial plants believe they are helping the home team to recapture their prestige in the world.

The message of the 'needs of the many' is so heavily entrenched that the common citizens of China could be highly offended if a corporation based in a Western nation told them they needed to ask for better conditions. Not because they wouldn't agree that a comfy chair twice a day would be nice...but they don't need yet another foreign influence trying to corrupt their mind. China is on the rise, and their integration into the rest of the world is going to be done on their terms as much as possible.

Until the people of China decide to change things for the people of China, there is little that the rest of the world can do (in the short term anyway). In the mean time, the information that a Chinese printer gives to their US based customers is mostly brochure-esque flim-flam, bills and product shipments.

I think it is safe to assume that if the peeps at Paizo found out that the particular printing company they used for printing treated their workers ruthlessly? They'd change to another printer...but guess what...it'd be another Chinese printer. Business decisions like that will do more to change conditions for workers in China than anything else. If these companies consistently lose business based on their workers' conditions or environmental issues they'll make changes (we hope).

*minor tangent* Also...guys/gals...assuming that every Chinese printing company looks like a 19th century British coal mine is just a tad dehumanizing, and undervalues the potential for compassion, and change within an entire ethnicity of people...*end tangent*

The best thing we can do (in my opinion) is throw our money at Paizo in mass quantities (I'm talkin' second mortgages and selling babies for medical experiments), and let them wage the battle of ethics and economics for us with Chinese printers. The Paizonians are first rate human beings and will do the right thing when presented with a challenge. We can't hold Cosmo against them.

Player: Oh come on guys, we just fought a friggin death knight, it can't possibly get any worse! I'm kicking the dang door in while these guys whine and...

GM: Make a reflex save please

Player:...complain..a..what?

GM: A reflex save...please roll one.

Player: *bonk clack clack* 14

GM: *tosses fist full of d6s on the table*

Just have the goblins kidnap Ameiko because they can use her to read, and to get more fireworks...and to make their own tribe. Flee north from Sandru's caravan and the wrath of Chief Gutwad...voila.

Suffice it to say that the PCs would stand a good chance (if they manage to survive) of becoming some of the world's most powerful goblin heroes. And they might even be able to work with the Oni to secure the country of Minkai. Who knows, maybe along the journey the foul little miscreants decide that they wish to declare horse-hate on the Oni and their minions because they talk funny, or because they are threatening the goblin pcs' reading slave (and good luck charm). At that point, you could twist the end of the campaign to almost "as-written." Ameiko might not have the best time, but that's what she gets for being a spoiled rich heir to the throne of a distant land :-)

It's totally doable. But a monstrous PC version of a published AP is going to require some output of energy (to make it fun for 15 levels anyway). You'll just have to rewrite, massage and redirect some of the published content. And as always, stat-blocks are party neutral so you can toss any of the friends/foes presented in the entire campaign as the reverse or as-written depending on the over-arching story.

I've never worked at a post office.

Though you HAVE spent years dealing with exorbidant shipping charges...so you may be more knowledgable about the postal system than any actual USPS employee.

We be Goblins was awesome, and the gobbies have been a real breakout fan-favorite for all ages of gamers for Paizo. I bet the gang could throw out an entire Goblin AP and watch it become their most popular one to-date. Everyone would be so busy trying to light horses on fire that they'd never worry over-much about unbalanced encounters, smooth segues, or attaining the perfect magic items for their build.

I'd love to see such a review of Shakespeare or Twain. :)

"No Maps! wtf 1/5 stars!"

I can see from the throng an answers to this thread that Ameiko is not a "Mary Sue" by most definitions; but that handling her (and Shalelu Andosana for that matter) well is very important to avoid that impression.

Am I reading you correctly?

I think this is a pretty decent way of coming at the topic, and worth requoting for sanity's sake :-). We certainly don't need to turn this into a slap-fest.

Ameiko CAN come off as a pre-destined character that must needs be infinitely lovable and draped in plot-armour.

Ameiko DOES NOT HAVE to come off as a pre-destined character that must needs be infinitely lovable and draped in plot-armour.

GM's could find themselves unwittingly presenting Ameiko this way, and so this topic is a good thing to at least touch on. But it is less about whether or not one presentation of Ameiko is objectively superior to another (no need to treat it as a source of 'badwrongfun' or argue somantics of a fictional and highly nonstandardized label). Rather, it is about preparing for running Jade Regent in such a way that players will have a good time rubbing elbows with Ameiko and the other NPC's. And preparing it in a manner that GM's can present the modules and NPC's in a way that is most fun for them as well.

Decide if it is even an issue for you/your group, then adjust/react accordingly so that mass amounts of fun and monster slaying can ensue. Be excellent to each other and...PARTY ON DUDES

On the torture angle, there is an example from pulp fantasy as provided by the Mathias "I swear I'm not Solomon Kane!" Thulman books . His cohort Streng is his torturer. And he does his job at several points through the Witch Hunter/Finder/Killer books. However, there is not a great deal of focus on the process. More time is spent on the lead in "do this or we'll torture you" and on the results "now that you've been tortured are you ready to talk?" I'd recommend a similar focus from PC's.

For GM's that are worried about the "on screen" actions of their players should be able to discuss it beforehand out of character. A simple "no hitting below the belt" style ground rule before diving into the action. As long as the players are on board with their actions or those of their minions being handled off screen there's really not much danger of things getting all Saw or Human Centipede on you.

Then there are groups that will take this module over the river and through the woods to the blackest depths of depravity. Like an episode of Robot Chicken or Cupcake Wars.

Takes all kinds :-)

One looks to have horns, possibly making him evil. That could get awkward.

OR it could give the wiley evil players a good opportunity to do THIS (with Mal and Zoe as members of the evil party of course).

I've uncorked the Beginner Box on my near-five year old daughter. When in doubt just start hucking out game mechanics (or taking on the mechanics processing load yourself) in favor of the roleplaying and choice/plan/strategy portion of the game. It's a neat product that scales up or down to expectations pretty well. With my daughter I had her roll dice, come up with ideas and engage in what her character was experiencing. I handled the rest of the crunching.

We've played a couple times thus far (about an hour or so each time) and she really likes the fact that she's finally able to play the same game as dad. She was trying to replay portions of our game during her pretend time with my son who is 2. He seemed to like the idea of hitting goblins, but had little use for the character motivations of Adeline's mouse warrior (valeros with a mouseguard twist). I suppose that means he's about as advanced as some gamers I've played with who are in their 30's.

Age matters not in the realm of adventure. In fact kids almost universally rock at pretending and imagining hypothetical situations. I'd heartily recommend getting kids hooked on imagination-land adventures before the video games do. It's an ever shrinking window, but I'm doing my part to replace myself with two more gamers for the future :-). The Beginner Box helps me.

My 5-yr old jumped onto his chair and punched the air with both fists when he defeated the 2nd goblin. Then he bunny-hopped down our hallway doing the same on every jump. I think he liked it.

A few hours later we played for another ten minutes and then similar later.

AH five year old attention spans...the ultimate solution to the fifteen minute adventuring day :-)

I did a level 0 "pre-adventure" with my Crimson Throne group to build up some stability for character relationships after "that part of the first AP adventure where a lot of groups tend to wonder why they would stick together."

They were all kids, and I had them pick an NPC class (expert, warrior, etc) and they made level 1's (about as close to level 0 as you can get without putting a good deal of effort behind it or resorting to raw d20 rolls). They were all at least aquainted with each other if not out-right friends. A couple of them were Little Lambs and the other two were Korvosan townies (getting the players heavily invested in Korvosa and each other is Rule #1 for CotCT).

Anyway they had a hoot being low-power rowdy kids. Then we fast-forwarded to the start of the AP and they were grown up, had a common childhood experience, and it was sort of a "chance reunion" that brought them back together after spending so many years apart. CotCT is a great great AP for zero-level outings.

However, I would caution against restricting the PC's to any narrow assortment of classes or adding in the tallying headache of tracking which weapons they used and what skills they favored. A street urchin becoming a Wizard's apprentice is just as easy to fit into a back-story as the street urchin becoming a scoundrel of a rogue.

My almost five-year old and I have been playing Mouseguard for about a year or so (eschewing the rules entirely and going for bouts of structured pretend time set in the Mouseguard world).

When I started unpacking my Beginner Box she was totally enthralled with the look and feel of all the stuff. She was a bit bummed that it wasn't about mice, and I just looked at her and said "Well June-bug...how about we make it about mice?" She gave me that "you are totally insane" look that all five-year old girls can fire at their dads.

I told her to trust me and I went to work with a little microsoft publisher point-n-clickery and voila...mouse hero that looked roughly like a pregen card, and a exacto'ed paper mouse stand-up hero. Granted it didn't look awesome, but my daughter was impressed so we'll call it a win :-)

She played Valeros reskinned as Soft-Patch (her often imagined heroine from our previous Mouseguard pretend times). She's a bit young to grab on to many of the mechanics so I took care of most of that for her. But she was so intrigued with they way we combined our pretend with rolling daddy's dice and moving pieces around the map. She laughed at my goblin voices (Warhammer Goblin style) and decided to beat up the Goblin King and scare off his "babies" (the term minions equated to babies in her mind...which may provide future hilarity with my regular roleplaying group).

She was terrified of the dragon (prompting my wife to glare at me and say "Dragons Jess? Really? Thanks for the nightmare fuel) and decided to run away and find some help before she came back to face it. We finished up our little session with talking about the kind of help she wanted to find. Next time I guess we'll be searching for a brave prince and a wizard or a witch to help out. Officially off the map, but hey, it'll be fun as long as she's having fun.

The end result was that we both shared a real adventure, and at no time was she whining about loot or game balance, or wasting time with "talking to XP."

Thanks Paizo!
-Jess Emerson

Perhaps a fan-made or community-made project to flesh out the NPC all-stars-in-the-background is warranted. That way it won't clutter up the field of vision for GM's that are fine as-is, and people that are looking for a "bit more" won't have to build it on their own. Of course this does little to help anyone kicking off the AP today (Jade Regent won't hit my table for well over a year or more depending on the longevity of my Eclipse Phase game).

So get crackin' on the fan-content minions!

The NPC's in this AP are as vital to the fun and success of this story as Korvosa was to Curse of the Crimson Throne.

It isn't an unreasonable request to have some word-count devoted to some well thought over NPC goals-actions-motivations at milestone points in an adventure module. The personality and flair of the NPC is totally within the purvue of the GM. However, in such an NPC driven story line as Jade Regent...we deserve better than minimal "and then the NPC's step aside so that the PC's can be heroes." As a GM it leaves us pulling our straggly beards in frustration to come up with a way to weave that into a story that is fun to tell and as a player it cheapens the event and breeds hostility toward NPC's that the GM is going to be reading about and jamming down his players' throats for module after module.

Player: "Wait so Bort and Herschel love NPC Alpha...but...it's Sunday so they are going to church instead of helping us out in finding NPC Alpha? F those guys, I don't trust them anymore."

GM: "no they really do love NPC Alpha...it's just...well they really really need to pray and then they have to help their grandma move apartments and then Fringe is on so they have to get home for that."

*adopting the propper guise of Jeff Goldblum as doomsday theorist*

Has uh, any thought. Been uh given to how the uh the uh tomes. Are ultimately distributed around the globe? There are both physical and esoteric concerns at play here.

From a physics standpoint, that many tons of awesome located in Washington so close to another high awesome-gravity object (Paizo HQ) could create a micro singularity that will devour most of the Seattle metro sprawl. I suppose as long as it starts with Tacoma we can simply thank Bill and his team of deviants for the favor. Yeah.

But we also need to map out where the uh tomes are located so that we can see that by connecting the dots we have have actually created a huge summoning circle. Me thinks now would be a good time to prepare for the return of Orcus. Mmhmm.

I bet Mateusz and the gang at Q-Workshop would make you some pink or purple fudge dice! Though...you'd have to fork out the cash pretty hard. But it IS possible...just sayin :-)