KarlBob's page

I had the same questions. With the Shackles in their official position on the map of Golarion, traders would simply sail around them. At worst, they'd make the long trip around the southern tip of Garund to reach Sargava.

I solved this problem by rearranging the islands of the Shackles into a Caribbean-equivalent chain off the coast of Arcadia. Cheliax fits nicely into the role of Spain.

I never even thought about bringing home all of the miscellaneous items like clothes irons and brooms until I found out about the magic forge in the college basement. Almost everything you can pick up has some use.

also, bats are adorable!

Yes, they are.

YouTube, Imgur, and the like have done a lot for bats' reputation. Baby bats wrapped in tiny blankets, yawning bats, and bats gleefully eating fruit are all much more positive images than the classic "vampire bat feeding on a large herbivore" pictures that were common a few decades ago.

If it stinks it's also biology.

Or chemistry. There are some powerful stenches hiding on lab shelves.

Years ago I worked for a chemical supply company, with a lab and a warehouse full of various chemicals. One day an employee knocked a 500ml bottle of a chemical related to pyrrolidine off the shelf, and it shattered. We evacuated the warehouse, the lab, and the office. We left every door in the place open overnight, with no fear of thieves. If they could get inside to steal anything, they would have earned it. That was the worst smell I've ever experienced.

I've got The Blight and Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder coming in, and recently picked up a couple of bundles of smaller pdfs that I've barely downloaded, much less read.

Of course, there are much worse problems to have than an embarrassment of pdf riches, but there's definitely a lot of reading coming up.

I hope to use the 40% off coupon on some of the Blight accessories that I couldn't afford during the Kickstarter.

Crows, ravens, and great parrots prolly have the brainy bird market cornered, to add to Corvus's note.

Owls, sorry guys, you are stealthy and cool looking, but rank only in the mids for smarts LOL

That reminds me of the BBC Bird Brain of Britain videos I saw years ago on PBS (and their equally impressive squirrel obstacle course videos. It's pretty amazing what squirrels will do for a few calories' worth of nuts).

Here is the latest news, and it's good news, indeed!

- i thought it would eat out of my hand...

Please get my finger back so the hospital can re-attach it. It's in the big brown one.

Thanks, KarlBob.

You're welcome.

Ok--all ancillary books are at the printer...

Pathfinder and 5e books are laid out and being proofed.

SW main book is next in layout.

Staff almost dead. Delivery in August (finally). Just the cards to go.

Woo hoo! The stars are aligning, and the human sacrifices are coming along nicely. Soon the prophesied time will arrive.

Ckorik wrote:

Thus our disagreement - the writeup is what's in the journal - which, as I understand it, would mean the stuff went to the island and the payment returned from there.

And even if that was the case (which I assume is not, since there are clearly Red Mantis agents in Varisia), the distance is maybe a couple of weeks by ship. Enough time to ship it, weaponize it and then bring the virus back to Korvosa. I just looked at the map of the Inner Sea again. The distance, if geography and distances parallels Earth's is approximatly the same as the distance between UK and the Canary Islands. That's not that long a travel. 16th century ships needed 65 days from Europe to the colonies in North America. Vasco daGama sailed from Lisbon to the Canaries from 8 July 1497 to 15 July. That's a week.

Not to mention the fact that the Red Mantis certainly have enough money and high level spell casters to teleport important people and items as needed.

As a GM, on more than one occasion I've told groups "You finished all the events I had planned for this session an hour ago. You were still role-playing, so I didn't announce that the game was over."

I've read advice books for GMs that rave about keeping the tension high and glossing over the "boring" parts of a story, but I'm happiest when my campaign world feels like something that persists between the adventures.

96. There was an old AD&D adventure where every room was linked to the other rooms by teleport gates, but with a twist. A doorway from Room A lead to Room B, but trying to return through that same doorway landed the character in Room C. There was a consistent pattern to the room connections, but it took some trial and error to figure it out.

The cast of The Canterbury Tales, some gender swapped to make the theft, I mean inspiration, slightly less obvious, singly or in groups, with Pathfinder class levels.

Townsfolk NPCs from old RPG books you happen to have lying around. (I find MERP books to be particularly helpful here.)

Which genders are these iconics ? Did anyone take notes when they were individually introduced ?

If they introduce a fungoid alien species, that could become a very confusing topic.

"I'm sex #10,347. My pilot is sex #12,658, and the gunner is sex #4,502."

Raia's looking pretty good talking on her holo communicator with her friend who just played really nasty pranks on Londo Molari.

Not many fishes

I don't really have a favorite iconic yet, but I love the space goblins on the First Contact cover. Especially the one with his ears cramped up in a fishbowl helmet.

UnArcaneElection wrote:

From a couple of posts inspired by a really bad Star Trek episode: The Next Generation episode (Genesis, one of the last ones, but not the very last one) where the crew devolves into animals that aren't even in their evolutionary lineage is mindbogglingly bad. Yet the failure to grasp evolution properly extends well beyond Star Trek, even seeping not only into plenty of other science (or something) fiction, but even science education and reporting as well, and even parts of life science that do not deal primarily with evolution. Why do people (even among the better educated) have such trouble grasping the non-linearity of evolution? What's been your experience in the part of the scientific community you deal with?

I loved ST:TNG, but that episode made me so angry I was gritting my teeth the whole time. To this day I can't watch it.

There's a trope for that. (Warning: TVTropes.com may be hazardous to your productivity.)

TNG proved that Star Trek writers don't understand our evolutionary past, then the Voyager episode "Threshold" showed that they're equally clueless regarding the future of evolution.

Incidentally, here we are 10 years later, still playing a modified version of the basic 3.x rules. How has Mr. Collins' (and company) Magic Item Compendium held up? Still useful, if you can find a copy, or not worth hunting down if you already have Ultimate Equipment?

Also, Real Realism in healing often includes variations on the phrase 'you'll never have full use of [body part] again, I'm afraid'. (Which is why I'm generally not a huge fan of games that try to do 'realistic' wounds - I'd rather not have my character face-down in a pool of their own blood on round one due to a bad roll, thanks.)

That takes me back to my Rolemaster days!

GM: "You take 15 hit points of damage, and the critical hit leaves you with a punctured spleen. Unless you receive a Restore Organ spell within the next five rounds, you're going to die. While you bleed out, you're stunned, prone, and defenseless. Any last words?"

Player: "Yes. I feebly raise my fist to the sky and curse the critical fumble table!"

KarlBob wrote:

I'm wondering whether this book will unify the older Faction Points/Prestige Points systems with the newer Organizational Influence system, or address one and ignore the others, or skip them all.

Nope; this isn't a book about joining a faction and gaining power in that faction.

Oh, so it's not too early after all. Thank you.

The answer is almost certainly one of those, KarlBob. ^_^

But of course, I'm sure it's too early for hints as to which one.

Speaking of ether, I heard something interesting about dark matter recently on NPR: for all we know, there could be tons of the stuff all around us right this moment, even passing through our bodies. It almost never interacts with the kind of matter that we're made of, so we don't notice it.

That sounds a lot like ether (except for the "transmission medium for light waves" aspect of ether). If you had some way to increase the interaction of normal matter with dark matter, and only turned it on when the normal matter was traveling "backwards" in the resonant chamber of an EM-style drive, then you would have something to push against. Since it wouldn't interact with the rest of the ship, you'd go forward.

(Sure, it wouldn't work for many, many reasons, but it's fun to resurrect a discredited 19th Century theory like ether by substituting a 20th/21st Century buzzword like dark matter.)

KarlBob wrote:

I'm late to the party, but...

My favorite example of "how scientists are" is Poltergeist. Something spooky and unseen is pulling all the chairs toward the middle of your dining room. If your reaction is to put your kid on one of the chairs and measure how fast it moves under load conditions, you might be a scientist.

And you would quickly get fired from any lab worth speaking of for ethics violations if you're that willing to risk a human life without having first run through tests using inanimate objects or animals.

This isn't Nazi Germany or Pasteur's labs.

Also true.

(Joke) One benefit of a home lab: no pesky ethics committee to make you try it with the bag of concrete and the family dog first. (/Joke)

Crusinos wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

I'll take it seriously the day they actually stick it on a probe and try it out...

And then if it works, I'll start demanding a Pluto orbiter.

They won't do that until they figure out how it works. After all, the last thing you want is to find out too late that the engines you just sent up generate black holes in zero gravity. And when you can't explain the physics behind how something works, you can't rule that out.

You don't understand scientists at all do you?

Of course they'd build one and try it just to see what happens. How else are they going to find out how it works? Or if it works.

I'm late to the party, but...

Alkenstar seems fairly stable and inoffensive, politically speaking. Jalmaray, too.

I believe Urgothoa and Zon-Kuthon would just LOVE the Outer Gods. In addition, Nyarlathotep could be worshipped all over the place openly under one of his 999 false guises and no one would know. Mwuahahahaha....

If it's true that the god Dou-Bral was possessed by an entity from the Great Beyond, and returned to Golarion as Zon-Kuthon, then it's entirely possible that there's already an Elder God/Great Old One in the core pantheon of the setting. He could be one of Nyarlathotep's 999 guises, for all we know.

The Sodden Lands and the remnants of Iobaria might also harbor isolated cults. There could be a shunned tribe in the Lands of the Mammoth Lords, or a desperate rebel faction in Irrisen might see Ithaqua as an alternative to Baba Yaga.

In Cthulhu cults of the Sodden Lands, there could be a belief that R'lyeh lies at the center of the Eye of Abendego.

In the tradition of Warhammer Fantasy, there could be decadent nobles in Taldor secretly worshipping the Elder Gods for kicks. Some might be bored dilettantes, while others secretly plot the regime's final calamitous downfall. Perhaps most frightening, some might seek to restore the country to its former glory by any means necessary. ("How many serfs does it want per month? That's not so many, really, and they're only serfs.")

For Desna:
"Pleasant dreams"
"Open roads"

"Clear skies"
"Good fortune"

"May the road rise up to meet you"
"May the wind always be at your back"
(Borrowed from an Irish blessing)

General Susumo in Kaoling:
"Service to the state"
"Glory to the race"
(Stolen from the Draka novels by S.M. Stirling)

Those are good points, above, about halflings and elves. I really like the "halflings originated in Arcadia" idea.

I'm curious how you envision this setting looking. Just mixing in Native American, European, Asian and African races and cultures in their own little countries right next to each other on the same landmass?

Maybe stick a Incan analogue in where Brevoy is and a Cahokia one in Galt, with some Inuit in Irrisen and then we can put not-Japan in Kyonin, etc.

Or just a smaller world? So things can be spread out in a way that makes more sense, with different races more isolated, but just have less of them, so that the initial setting book would have had the inner sea area and Arcadia and Tian Xia laid out in it?

TSR did something along those lines. The Time of the Dragon boxed set described a new continent on the Dragonlance world, called Taladas.

In the NW quadrant of the continent was a steppe/tundra gradient with near-Inuits, Uighur-analogues, elven almost-Plains Tribes, and goblin villagers.

The SW quadrant contained a minotaur/human Roman-style empire next door to an evil theocracy, a group of misplaced elves from Ansalon (the main Dragonlance continent), "anti-kender" (they constantly pick your pockets because you might have something to hurt them with), and an ancient race of elves who shunned contact with other races, like some versions of the fae. Oh yeah, and yeti/sasquatch!

The NE quadrant contained a ruined ancient empire overrun with primitive humanoid tribes, a small Glass Sea with 'skating' outriggers, and a Holland analogue with dikes, engineering guilds and inter-species cooperation.

The SW quadrant contained almost-Polynesian humans, and another group of ancient elves with a hunter/gatherer culture and nature-focused magic.

The middle of the continent was a still-bubbling magma sea, formed when the gods punished the ancient empire with one big comet, rather than a bunch of smaller meteors, and almost destroyed the planet. There was a steampunk society of competent tinker gnomes (again, opposite of Ansalon) hanging around smelting ores from the magma.

The setting had no Common language, and included a chart showing linguistic relationships between the various cultures, ranging from 'a few words are different' to 'lots of pointing and pantomime for the simplest questions'.

It was probably unrealistic to stuff all those cultures into one continent, but I really appreciated the number of frequently-overlooked-in-RPGs cultures that they showcased.

Ya gotta start somewhere, and they started with a pretty significant crossroads: the pseudo-Mediterranean. That let them address pseudo-Europe, pseudo-Africa, and pseudo-Arabia right away. With Jalmaray, they even shoehorned pseudo-Indian cultures into a map that would have excluded them in a more literal Earth-analog. Not so monolithic after all.

My personal quibbles about diversity relate more to the fact that on the Inner Sea map, there's one elven country, one orcish country, one dwarven country, no majority halfling or gnome countries at all, and dozens upon dozens of human countries.

And don't get me started on the references to Varisia as a frontier. Whose frontier would that be? Cheliax's? Taldor's, before them? I don't think the Shoanti ever thought that part of their former range was a frontier, compared to the rest of it. Okay, getting tired. Ranting. Going to bed. G'night, all.

It's also worth noting that Golarion's history and the history of many of even the smaller kingdoms in it go back much longer than anything in reality. Taldor is something like 5000 years old. Even Ustalav is around 2000 - older than Rome.

It might be reasonable to think in more nationalist terms with that kind of history behind you.

Paizo warned us against making fictional histories too long in the Gamemastery Guide, but they didn't take their own advice. To preserve my peace of mind, I generally knock a zero off of long term Golarion history references (thousands of years ago to hundreds of years ago), then shift more modern events to the next shorter unit (40 years of revolution in Galt becomes 40 months, or just over three years). I find it makes the timeline much easier to swallow without frothing at the mouth.

KarlBob wrote:

IRV?

Instant Runoff Voting.

Rank candidates in your order of preference. The candidate with the lowest number of 1st rank votes is eliminated and all those voters now move to their second ranked choice. Lets you vote for minor parties without worrying much about spoiler effects.

Thank you. Neat idea.

Coalition governments assembled from several small parties definitely have their problems, but by this time next year, the US might be ready to give it a try.

I still have fond memories of a campaign using the d6 mechanics. While I suppose it could have been fun under any system, I felt that the d6 system was very well-matched for our play style. Rules-light, and roleplay-intensive.

Our GM particularly enjoyed tempting Light Side Force users with easy access to Dark Side powers. A Jedi and an alien Force adept in our party nearly succumbed several times each.

Perhaps small Bags of Holding strategically sewn on the inside of a tailored suit would preserve those pristine lines?

That's another interesting idea.

I find that pockets make a costume look much too modern. Hence Pathfinder characters tend to wear pouches and bags.

A quick Google search suggests that pockets sewn into clothing appeared in the 18th century, and they only reached their current level of popularity in the early 20th century. Before the 18th century, some pouches were worn underneath clothing and accessed through slits, but they were still separate items.

based upon periods of real - life history ranging from 3rd century AD to early 18th century AD (Approximately)

Ok, that explains the long coats and naval uniforms from Skull & Shackles. Some of them have pockets, and they struck me as oddly modern at times.

It always seemed funny to me, that in a magic rich environment, that the upper class would not incorporate magic into clothing. Light, fire, smoke, shadows, would all be great affects on clothing.

That's an interesting thought. It could be something along the lines of the ceremonial outfits from the Hunger Games movies, or the holocaust cloak from The Princess Bride.

Here are some other high-tech dress effects that could be replicated with magic.

I'm glad to see there will be pawns for CotCT. I used the Bestiary Box and the Skull & Shackles pawns together when I ran S&S, and it worked out great.

In the spirit of offering detailed, concrete feedback, I have written up a brief usability analysis of the Paizo checkout procedure. It has screenshots, discussion, and recommendations. Here it is, in PDF format:

Paizo Checkout Feedback

I would usually charge for something like this, but in this case I actually spent money to make it happen. (Two purchases to get the screenshots.) So I hope it's helpful.

I don't even work for Paizo, but after reading the linked document, I feel compelled to thank you for providing such an excellent analysis of the order process. If I needed a site redesigned, an example like that would make choosing a designer much easier.

Here's one of the times when Ryan explained the OGL issues:

The problem with the OGL is not that it excludes all electronic games from being created. There is no such limitation in the OGL.

The problem with the OGL is that is has an exclusionary license. By that I mean that Open Game Content can only be licensed with the OGL, and cannot be encumbered by any other terms.

That causes several problems.

First, most computer software is derived by combining lots of code together and that code all has licenses which describe how those combinations are made legal and which bind the recipients of the final software to certain terms and conditions. All of that would be incompatible with the OGL. That means that a piece of software either has to be written from scratch so that there are no entangling licenses, or it has to be structured in such a way that the Open Game Content used with that software is wholly separate from the other licenses which encumber the code. In practice that means that OGL licensed software is practically, but not legally, impossible outside of a very narrow range of utilities.

Second, most commercial computer software is licensed to end users, not sold. Those licenses carry all sorts of restrictions against copying, disassembly, etc. Even "Open Source" licenses like the GPL have terms which are binding on the recipients to protect the integrity of the "copyleft" mechanisms that they use to license the copyrights embodied in the work. All of those licenses are incompatible with the OGL.

Third, MMOs in particular also require terms of service which prohibit all sorts of activities like harassment, cheating, reverse engineering the protocols used to communicate between client and server, disrupting the server, failing to pay for subscriptions, etc. None of those terms would be compatible with the OGL.

This makes it both practically and legally impossible to make an MMO that uses Open Game Content. Which means that we cannot make Pathfinder Online use the D20 game system used in the Pathfinder Tabletop RPG...

I'm having a little trouble processing this:

...

So, Golarion is whisked away? Check.
"In its place"- With Golarion not there, the cultures of Golarion have evolved and spread throughout the system? Check. Wait, what? If the world these cultures are on is removed from the solar system how do the cultures of that world evolve to spread throughout the solar system?
I can see the cultures of the other worlds of the solar system evolving in its absence, but how do the cultures of that world evolve to space flight without that world?

My guess would be that Golarion's civilizations developed space flight, they met the other cultures in their solar system, some people from Golarion emigrated to the rest of the system, and then Golarion disappeared.

It reminds me of Titan: A.E.. In that film, some of the surviving humans tried to preserve Earth's cultures in drifter colonies. Others assimilated into the wider galactic culture, with varying degrees of success.

Thank you. Those both seem like solid additions to the module.

The plush shark attacking the Maiden sounds pretty funny, too.

Wherever you decide to add content, here's an excellent thread full of suggestions. I inserted some of these in addition to the published content, and used others to completely replace things (like most of the mystery in Tempest Rising).

Adding content does create the risk that the party will level up faster than the AP assumes they will. I avoided this problem by eliminating experience points, and having the party level up exactly when the AP assumes they will.

Another question is: According to the rules the pilot of the ship can roll profession sailor and reduce the results with his check (since he can cast read weather). Should doing that lower their race score? The pilot of their ship has a +35 profession sailor and in many cases that would drop the rolls I made into the 'Normal Weather' category.

Does that even seem logical on the fringe of a hurricane? I'm thinking of just allowing him to try and avoid waterspouts with it.

I wouldn't allow the result to drop all the way to Normal Weather, simply because they are on the edge of a magical hurricane.

When I ran the race, I reduced weather events to a couple per day for two reasons, both related to maintaining tension at the table.

First, my players elected Sandara as the Captain*. She was the one with the excellent Profession (sailor), and watching an NPC make tons of skill checks is boring.

Second, there are checks involved in all of the race events. Adding weather checks at the default frequency would have meant a whole lot of rolls each day. No matter who's rolling the dice, it's hard to keep players excited if they're rolling way too many skill checks.

*They made Sandara the Captain in order to prevent inter-party squabbling over authority, and to avoid the "Kirk problem" (Why is the Captain always risking his life on away missions? Shouldn't he stay at the helm?).

"Anyone who plays Class X when Class Y and Class Z exist is a fool" = Bad Attitude

"Anyone who chooses feats to increase die rolls rather than to fit a pre-written character back-story is a munchkin" = Bad Attitude

Don't try to bring the Pathfinder version of Pun-Pun to every game.
Don't try to bring a professional basket-weaver to a dungeon crawl.

Try to have some fun while you're playing a game.
The game is more fun for each player and the GM when nobody is trying to spoil anyone else's fun.

The spherewalker wasn't upgraded in the RotRLAE, and it's unlikely that the justicar will be updated here, especially since it wasn't actually used in the AP (to the best of my knowledge).

Thanks. Good to know.

KarlBob wrote:

The Galt example gave me an idea: A colony has just won its freedom by way of a revolt, but things are still very chaotic on the ground. The PCs start small, protecting their neighborhood from looters. Eventually they wind up in the role of the Continental Congress after the American Revolution: Establishing the new governing principles of the nation.

Unlike most APs, the climax of Book 6 might not involve combat at all. It could be a series of debates between rival political parties culminating in a decisive vote, rather than a brawl. (This might be the Ultimate Intrigue campaign, as well as the Lawful campaign.)

Can't you essentially do this in Hell's Rebels? Yes, rebellions tend to be viewed as Chaotic, but it seems to me that the emphasis is more rebelling against Barzillai's naked and petty cruelty (the whole "if a paladin sees an unjust law they can't change, they'll break it to do what's right and work to restore order later/Good's more important than Law" thing) after that, you're left with a newly freed Archduchy on your hands that is looking to you for leadership...

I haven't read or played Hell's Rebels, but it sounds like a reasonable way to extend the campaign beyond the AP as written.

The difference is that I proposed to start the players at level 1 in the immediate aftermath of a rebellion (which presumably had NPC leaders). From what I understand, the characters in Hell's Rebels are major players in the revolution, and they'll be pretty high level by the time Barzillai is defeated.

I think the second phrase in Mark's quote ("I usually let it stack anyway in home games") is the example that I would follow for my own home game.

The Galt example gave me an idea: A colony has just won its freedom by way of a revolt, but things are still very chaotic on the ground. The PCs start small, protecting their neighborhood from looters. Eventually they wind up in the role of the Continental Congress after the American Revolution: Establishing the new governing principles of the nation.

Unlike most APs, the climax of Book 6 might not involve combat at all. It could be a series of debates between rival political parties culminating in a decisive vote, rather than a brawl. (This might be the Ultimate Intrigue campaign, as well as the Lawful campaign.)

ThunderDome. Two Tarrasques enter, one Tarrasque leaves.

And the collateral damage to the countryside is even worse than a single rampaging Tarrasque.

(If this question was asked in any board but Rules, I'd totally support chucking RAW and RAI and citing Rule of Cool to justify a Tarrasque Thunderdome. Since it is in the Rules board, I guess I'll have to support the diligent folks above me who explained why it doesn't work that way.)

One thing to keep in mind is that most characters probably wouldn't guess their own alignments correctly. People in general are great at rationalizing and self-deception, and many characters labeled as Evil would be surprised to learn that about themselves.

If the paladin can convince the wizard that Abbadon is truly where the wizard's soul will wind up in the afterlife, then that could provoke several reactions from the wizard. Seeking redemption, abandoning all pretense of good and doubling down on evil, and swerving away from neutral evil into lawful evil or chaotic evil are all possibilities.

There's a rogue archetype from Drop Dead Studios.

And a psionic tactician archetype from Dreamscarred Press.