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Wow. I got a lot of new books to add to my reading lists. Thank you very much terraleon!
:D
So in recent months I've become enamored of Kobold Press' Southlands setting, and am running a weekly game set in the world. While combing through the book, I noticed some clear influences to the Middle East and Africa, notably Nurian's obvious Egyptian influences. But I also noticed some less obvious things gleaned from Wikipedia articles. Such as Nurian cities having the "Per-" prefix like Per-Anu and Per-Bastet apparently have real connotations. Or cities named after local deities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadjet Or that Egypt did have a cult of Aten, who was a monotheistic sun faith. Or the nomadic Tamasheq people's penchant for wearing blue garments, not unlike the real-world Tuareg tribes of Northern Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_people I mostly found this via Google and Wikipedia searches, which I found very cool because it shown that the writers were deriving inspiration from real world as well as fantasy elements to create an interesting blend. But as far as I can find, there's no internal listing of inspired works in the Southlands Campaign Setting, nor can I find any articles where Wolfgang Baur or other writers talked about the research material they used. I suppose it may seem niche, but I enjoy looking at the behind-the-scenes inspirations of RPG books and settings I'm enamored with, so as to see how various works came to shape as well as delving into more reading material to grab for my own games. Anybody got any knowledge of potential real-world inspirations and material for Southlands?
Realize that this is a month-old comment, but I think a large part of it is that message board chatter at best tends to be unrepresentative of the greater gaming market. Paradoxically, it's often an invaluable resource for advertising. I think that especially from the 4e D&D era, many fans learned to avoid negative and complaints threads. Instead of trying to argue against or convert people, they went off into their little communities or stay out of board culture entirely. There's also the factor that in some cases, people will complain but still fork over cash, especially if it's a publisher who they still respect and trust.
For me, my faves are: Path of War: Revolutionized things on both the player and GM side of things with martial characters. Were varied and fun to play to the point that 50% to 75% of noncaster PCs in my campaigns either has martial disciple levels or the Martial Training feat tree. Rule Zero: Underlings: A great resource for making quick mook enemies on the fly. Disregards current monster/NPC rules to allow for the creation of glass cannons, who can dish out enough damage to be threatening yet not having bloated hp so your Fighter really can cleave through a bunch of mooks like many action heroes. Spheres of Power: Although I have yet to use it, I love the system enough that I want to see more of it someday. I think it works better than the Vancian system in many areas. Way of the Wicked: A very cool and novel Adventure Path I'd like to run some day. New Paths Compendium: Most of the classes therein are cool and interesting enough to use. My faves are the white necromancer, the savant, and the theurge. Southlands Campaign Setting: Interesting worlds which explore a fantasy counterpart Africa and Middle East with integration of RPG tropes, an underused part of the world in many campaign settings. Path of Shadows: Cool fluff and mechanics of evocative shadow-themed stuff. The nightblade class in particular's a great sneaky gish with a lot of potential for various character concepts. Sword of Air: One of the other mega-adventures/adventure paths I wish to run. Open-world sandbox centered around the eponymous MacGuffin, with a bunch of side plots and places to explore so that the main quest can be done more or less on the PC's own time. The Adequate Commoner: Love it for the novelty of the campaign style. Part CharOps guide, part sourcebook for campaigns with all-Commoner parties.
So in regards to Anaxagoras' above post, this is a common thing I've seen both in this thread and elsewhere about folk who are intrigued by Throne of Night only to be dismayed upon hearing its unlikely continuation and poor customer-service relations. Although this post may eventually get buried in a few months' time down the line, I'd like to link to a researched blog post I wrote on the subject. It's a compilation of most of what's been going on with Fire Mountain Games the past three years concerning Throne of Night and related projects.
I think I discovered a Longcat reference in the Southlands Campaign Setting: http://i.imgur.com/KlVP1KB.png Colossal. Feline. Eel-like. Winding around. There's no other cat who I know of which fits this description than our beloved Longcat.
Go into people's houses and smash pots in the hopes of finding money.
Do the pc's don extremely skimpy power armor? Only if they want to. :P I do plan on having a storm giant NPC with a size-category-changing ring in charge of student discipline if I ever get around to it.
I have more than a few unorthodox campaign ideas: X-Crawl Road Trip: The PCs are an internationally famous crew of gladiators in the Roman Empire's most popular reality television contest. Their next destination is a dungeon-crawl in Lawrence, Kansas, and they travel in a luxury entourage of limousines and summoned mounts. Unfortunately their magically-powered transportation runs out of gas smack-dab on a highway somewhere in Middle America. Celebrity status can only get them so far, and they need to get to Lawrence within 72 hours or else their position is forfeit! Do they go monster-hunting to raise gas money, hitch-hike with a bus full of demon-worshiping metalheads, or steal their rival crawlers' truck golem when they stop at the local bar and grill? Yes, I'm partially inspired by Final Fantasy XV for this. Sword of Levity: A campaign utilizing the Sword of Air sandbox adventure by Frog God Games, only this plays up some of the more whimsical and sillier elements. Red Dragon Inn: I actually played 2 sessions of this before, but I'd like to run it again someday. Basically I utilize the rules from Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns & Taverns. The PCs inherit an inn which has a statue dedicating to a goddess of hearth and home in the basement. Satisfied customers generate energy of positive feeling, which the statue can then convert into magical items and other things PCs enjoy. Meanwhile the surrounding lands contain room for adventure, such as a fabled magical icebox which can preserve perishable food for weeks. There are also potentially interesting encounters, such as a 1st-level destined hero who stops at the inn...while the demon lord's agents tasked with her destruction are also staying there! Slay la Slay: A Tome of Battle/Path of War-centric game where the PCs are students at a fabled Battle Academy, disciples of a monk's monastery, or some other environment heavily inspired by shounen/seinen fighting anime. And yes, it's expected that people will shout out the names of their maneuvers in combat.
As part of my birthday, I decided to get (what else?) a bunch of RPG sourcebooks. I included some big releases on the wishlist, including some Frog God mega-projects such as Slumbering Tsar, Razor Coast, Rappan Athuk, and Sword of Air. I have yet to even approach a comprehensive read of them, but I've been skimming through them. And I spotted quite a few things one wouldn't ordinarily find in other sourcebooks. Although most of their adventures lean on the serious side, there are whimsical bits thrown in which raise a chuckle or arch an eyebrow. It happened often enough that I decided to start a list. Naturally this is a work in progress: Sword of Air: "I can be the monkey, but you have to drive the train:" the first picture in the book is a monkey on a runaway train, accompanied by a little essay on player agency vs. railroading. I like where this is going. Joe Platemail: Various FGG books made references to Joe Platemail, usually as an example of how heavy armor might be a liability in certain environments. Turns out that Joe was a real PC in the author's old group games. He was an extraordinarily lucky Fighter with abysmally low mental ability scores. He survived where many others failed by the luck of the dice, but finally met an ignoble end of the hands of his own armor, drowning to death as he found himself unable to swim in heavy metal. On page 47 of Sword of Air, Joe Platemail III has Pathfinder stats. He's a 20th level Fighter with an 18 in Str/Dex/Con and 3 in Int/Wis/Cha. The text points out that the GM is encouraged to make his legendary luck an actual thing, in that deadly attacks and traps always seem to affect people near him instead of the man himself. Hillbilly Dragons: On page 53 detailing the wilderness environs, there are two rival families of dragons, the Hatfields (green) and McCoys (blue), trying to claim territorial dominance. Slumbering Tsar Saga: There's a party in Orcus' pants and everyone's invited: The Hidden Citadel dungeon is a giant statue in the shape of the demon lord of death, with named portions separated by body parts. The Lap of Orcus had a financial and entertainment district, including many taverns and an S&M club among other things. Rappan Athuk: Here Lies drnate29, 762-813: The dungeon entrance proper has a large graveyard preceding it, many of them rather new. There's a one-page listing of obituaries bearing the names of players, backers and play-testers, including more than a few titles which can only be Internet handles. Banana of Holding: The Banana of Holding is one of several new magic items, which can be found as randomly-generated treasure in an underground jungle temple. It is much like its bag counterpart, except slippery when on the ground. 16 Trolls, 1 Jug: One of the encounter rooms is titled 16 Trolls and a Jug of Alchemy. The encounter is pretty much a horde of trolls with a buried Jug of Alchemy as one of the treasures. This very encounter is referenced in the introduction about the old days of whimsical dungeon design, when a dungeon's ecology didn't need to make sense. 2,000th time's the charm: the final and most dangerous level of Rappan Athuk, the sanctum of Orcus himself, has never been reached in 25 years of GMing and playtesting.
Rule Zero: Underlings is a great and quick way to build mook and minion NPCs to face your heroes without needing to spend laborious time building stat blocks and keeping track of myriad modifiers. I also recently bought the Genius Guide to Simple Class Templates for Monsters, which is also a good time-saving method of applying class features to monsters as templates instead of adding levels to them (and thus recalculation of all the monster's prime attributes).
My Rule Zero: Underlings review is now up on RPGnet. I also reviewed Way of the Wicked, Book One, over a year ago as well. As the latter was read over 2,000 times, this is a great way to generate spotlight.
Sands of Eiklatha is a desert-based campaign setting with several interesting features, from playable undead race to theocratic frogs who view the sands and sun as evil and guard rivers and oases from them. However, there is one aspect which stands head and shoulders above all others, the Water Chinchilla!
This cute, adorable animal is a highly prized creature for its ability to turn brackish water into clean drinking source. They are commonly sold along the banks of river villages and in adventurer's shops, on their own or in water-filled barrels of 10. And yes, they can be obtained as familiars. Even the most jaded of gamers will grow to love these fuzzy little rodents if not for their adorableness, but for their vital function in an arid desert-based campaign. Just picture it; chefs at restaurants holding the bloated furry creatures over plates, squeezing out soups and drinks for thirsty patrons! A sudden rainstorm causes the sorcerer's familiar to balloon up in reaction. This is the perfect way to inject some lightheartedness into a harsh desert setting, and I might just borrow this creature for my home games.
Core-only in Pathfinder is a great place to begin, and a terrible place to end. One of Pathfinder's strengths is the diverse amount of options to make all sorts of character concepts. As far as I know precious few D&D Editions and retroclones come close to this. As I get along great with my players and they enjoy my games, I don't think they'd leave if I said 'core only' for one game one day. It probably won't be a long campaign, though, as we'd be selling ourselves short on all the stuff that's out there. This is hypothetical, though. Why would I or them give up one of the RPG's greatest positives?
Bloat can be a problem from the perspective of a consumer, who only has so much funds to buy so many books full of new, neat options. Bloat can be a problem when you allow way too many things at once in the game, especially new subsystems. Bloat can be a problem when you have to haul around physical books to access the material. A few new races is manageable. So are some new classes, provided everyone has the material easily available. D20 Pathfinder SRD is a godsend for this, as I do Roll20 games online, and things are quite manageable. But on a personal level, I prefer making characters with as few sourcebooks as possible to keep things easy. When it comes to adventures I mercilessly steal from a variety of sources for new stuff for my PCs to encounter, especially monsters.
Actually, as far back as Basic D&D, one's Charisma score determined how likely your followers were to stay loyal to you while fighting and exploring the dungeon instead of packing up and fleeing. And Charisma modified Reaction rolls when negotiating/intimidating monsters and NPCs. So game rules for social interaction came as early as 1982 or thereabouts.
Whenever I read "FaWtL" I always think it's short for one of the Adventure Path titles, but then I quickly remember it as Paizo's general random thread.
I'd like to point out that I own Tales, and it's a very good example of a Mythic Arabia product done right in many ways. Its rules system is True20 and its setting is in a fantastic version of the real-world Islamic Caliphate, but it's got several interesting things you might find useful for a Pathfinder game. It discusses the genre's trope of a framed story, or a "story within a story," where a player or GM at the table can invoke a flashback-style "here's how I ended up with the sultan's magic necklace at the bottom of this trapped pyramid" where the group takes on the roles of characters in the story. It also has a bibliography at the start of scholarly books concerning the history, folklore, and culture of the Arab world. Mini-games for chase scenes and debates, which can be converted over to Pathfinder with a little work (both are quite skill-based, so it should be easy).
So in my current campaign I toyed with the idea of handing out certain feats for free, namely Exotic Weapon Proficiency. In related news, I got around to thinking of handing out "feat taxes" for free to characters of certain concepts. To that end, I made this house rule in progress. Tell me what you think! Free Market Feats In Pathfinder, there are a few feats which are nigh-essential to popular character concepts. Take Precise Shot, for example: it’s a feat which does not let you do a cool thing, but merely removes a penalty for doing something which will happen a lot in a typical campaign. Given that most PCs at low levels will have access to only a few feats at most, customization is limited because the game mechanics practically require these options. Rules: At character creation, a PC may select up to four [Tax] feats as bonus feats. They do not need to meet the feats’ prerequisites in order to take them. List of [Tax] feats: Combat Expertise
Pathfinder has a wide variety of monsters of all shapes and sizes. That is, except for ones belonging to the two smallest size categories. And what monsters exist that are Fine and Diminutive are largely swarms of vermin. Unsatisfied with the current selection of puny first-party monsters, I created a mini-bestiary containing 12 new monsters to insert into your next gaming session! Have you ever wanted stats for a pygmy marmoset familiar? Perhaps the idea of a sentient, flying ioun stone shooting rays of magical energy appeals to you? Maybe the inclusion of a spell-slinging magebeetle twisted by arcane experiments is what your dungeon needs? For the low price of $3.99, A Fine Bunch of Monsters can be yours!
I pondered this quite a bit when designing my Nice Things for Fighters book. A lot of Fighter fixes and options focus only on increasing the numbers for combat actions without expanding the available options. And what good feats there are are often buried under feat trees requiring several levels to go through before you can do that one cool thing. All the while prepared spellcasters can switch out their spells and don't need to do the Character Optimization and Dumpster-Diving for Splatbook Dance to be versatile, effective combatants. You know how Weapon Specialization requires a minimum Fighter level in order to take? We need more feats like that, because otherwise all [Combat] feats can be eventually taken by anyone. Give fighters access to cool and powerful options and feats which don't require dumpster-diving through splatbooks and building feat trees in order to take. Spellcasters don't need Scorching Ray as a prerequisite for Fireball, for example. Options which shore up where the Fighter lacks most is a definite step forward. Area of Effect attacks, negative status conditions (nauseated, ability damage, etc), alternate movement speeds, and others should be built-in class features or unique feats for martials. You can crank up weapon damage all you want, but there are too many ways around that and still keeps the Fighter as a One-Trick-Pony.
Copy/Paste for those of us unable to traverse to tumblr? Transcript:
Apologies if this has been posted elsewhere on the boards, but I saw this posted around the Twittersphere, and felt like sharing this:
Disintegrate + Gust of Wind to scatter the dusty remains. Bonus points if used at sea or over a large body of water. "Now can we please get back to saving the world?"
My personal feelings on martial classes for Pathfinder: Path of War. Aside from that, I feel that martial characters should be able to: 1. inflict status conditions on attacks without the use of feat trees or equipment. Blind, stun, daze, suffocate, ability drain, et cetera, as class and archetype features. 2. Replicate magical effects without automatically being "magical." I wrote an essay on this issue over a year ago on rpg.net. 3. Gain access to alternate forms of mobility and movement and sensory abilities. You can jump so good you might as well be flying, like the protagonist from a Wuxia movie. You can turn any rope, pulley system, or grappling link into an efficient means of climbing (as well as making ranged attacks against flying opponents). Swim through the ocean and hold your breath for long periods like Cu Chulainn of myth. You can "listen to the air" and gain blindsense/blindsight. Your lunging attacks grant an increase to your melee reach. Also, the ability to move and full attack would be a nice touch. 4. More class skills, more skill points. You usually don't have magic, you need to be talented at a lot of stuff! 5. Means of shutting down magical effects such as Wind Wall (which invalidates most ranged attacks), invisibility and incorporealness (which can easily invalidate martial's main option of damage), and teleportation (which allows easy escapes and puts significant distance between them and the martials). Also, bonus against mind-affecting effects to avoid the common "mental dominater" enemy (without a Cloak of Resistance and a Good Will save, you can effectively be controlled for the entire combat with dominate spells). 6. Allow options to retrain (switch out) feats. A preparation-based spellcaster who makes a poor choice in spells (their primary feature)can simply wait for the next day to pray or buy some scrolls/spellbook access. A character who picks the wrong feat has to wait 2 levels usually to get another one, and are stuck with their bad choice. On another note, the spellcasters of 3.X/Pathfinder are at their most powerful in comparison to other Editions, lacking much of the restrictions of the others. Taking primary spellcasters down a notch can contribute to eliminating Linear Fighters Quadratic Wizards.
I found Wreck-It Ralph to be too kiddy in its humor and walked out in 45 minutes. In regards to table-top games, I require players to wash their hands before touching my books if they ate greasy/salty/crummy snack foods.
Just as Wizards of the Coast was the big dog of D20 in 2000-2007, so is Paizo in the current era. Their product schedule is well known and anticipated among online fans. Their adventures, classes, and material are discussed, analyzed, and extensively used among gamers. But just like Wizards of the Coast in its time, they overshadow the 3rd Party Publishers. Drive-Thru RPG has over 3,000 3rd Party Pathfinder RPG products, and easily a third of that on Paizo's store front, so it's very easy for good stuff to fall through the cracks amidst the glut of material on sale. This thread is the winnowing process for these products, for gamers to recommend products they feel are of high-quality. Post the products you think are good, why they're good, and what they offer to gamers. I already covered some high-profile products, but I also want to focus on some of the more obscure ones which need more love. For example, Conflict PvP: Tactics and Teams Rulebook is a great labor of love that I don't see a lot of discussion on in Pathfinder forums. If you write/publish 3PP books, you can't promote your own stuff due to reasons of bias. Only other's people's stuff is allowed. Additionally, it must be for sale. Homebrew design and free stuff doesn't count, for you don't lose anything if you "get" the product. Other than these rules, post away! Format Template: Name of Product: Self-Explanatory
Here I'll start off. 1001 Spells
Cerulean Seas Campaign Setting and Undersea Sourcebook
Conflict PvP: Tactics & Teams Rulebook
The Ethermancer: An Eldritch Reboot
Midgard Campaign Setting
Path of War Subscription
SORD PF
Tales of the Old Margreve
Tome of Horrors Complete-Pathfinder Edition
Ultimate Psionics (supersedes Psionics Unleashed)
Way of the Wicked Adventure Path (consists of 6 separate adventures)
In Little Red Goblin's Google Document, Santiago's publisher is listed as "0." It should be "EN Publishing."
In regards to my own country the USA, the military. We have bases in over 100 countries, many of whom do not need our protection. Federal contractors overcharge the military for products which costs billions upon billions of dollars. Our military spending is approximately 42% of ALL countries in the world! Even if we cut it by 33%, we'd still be top dog. Also, continuing foreign engagements in nations while our economy's not doing well is a bad idea.
No YouTube, I don't want to integrate my G-Mail with my YouTube account, stop asking! I don't want the comment section crazies knowing who to e-mail!
After seeing the creativity Paizo did with revising Goblins, I'm kind of disappointed that orcs and kobolds are still pretty much the same as their other campaign setting counterparts. Also, not enough Goblin-themed products.
I'd recommend the Wurst of Grimtooth's Traps by Necromancer Games. The traps veer more towards the Rube Goldberg end of practicality and are overall very lethal, but it's an entertaining read and very creative. Nothing as simple as a "poisoned dart in treasure chest" here! |