Luke's page

I've found a need to totally rewrite the plotlines of chapters 3 and 4, but that won't be a concern for awhile for you, if ever. Very much along the lines of MyraMistweave's comments that the plot to fight the five storms gets totally lost in book 3. And the book 4 motivations are a mess.

But the first two adventures I found to be rock solid. And the mini adventure We Be Goblins is a fun little intro to the plot without being a prequel. As was also suggested above, Burnt Offerings is a great way to establish Ameiko in both Sandpoint and the PC's lives. Makes the decision to leave Sandpoint feel more momentous. One of the PCs is a Kaijitsu cousin, which left me the freedom to axe Ameiko tragically and preserve the plot (and I may still do that :) That's another reason to keep good NPCs in this AP - whether they're Ameiko or any other you choose to create. If they stick around and help long enough, their deaths can be awesome motivation tools for the savvy DM.

But do yourself a favor and pick ones that are easy to DM PC, because that's what these NPCs end up being. Ameiko is not ideal for that. When you're running a big combat and you get to Ameiko in the initiative order, a bard-rogue-aristo who's hard from a plot standpoint to lose is a real tough character to make effective use of. "Ameiko sings a song," gets old as hell after awhile.

The caravan-thing was an amusing logistics exercise, but we dropped it quickly. But I will say we had some awesome nontraditional combat-from-wagons-and-horses random encounters to keep the road interesting. And some ad-hoc encounters both on the road and in Karlsgard that came down to defending the wagons. And I think having gone through the caravan rules to get the PCs to think through some of the details of the caravan composition helped seed those combats with NPCs and fun motivations. We definitely had some "S&@%, that wagon has all our food!" moments.

Jade regent and carrion crown are also recent, and already PFRPG compliant:)

This is the killer for me. Do the ones that aren't compliant. In order. Meaning cast my vote for Crimson Throne.

Ladies and Gent, I'm suspending the game for now on account of workload and mental exhaustion. This game has been alot of fun for a long time and I want to thank all my players, who also happen to be all my best friends. I'm very sure that we will roll again together soon in one form or another. :)

Tareth, I want to apologize for being such a spotty poster recently. I'm past the rough patch that was keeping me away from the game and am catching up tonight.

Sorry teamies. We've been getting back exhausted, and of course I forgot to bring the charger for my laptop, so this machine could go out at any moment... :)

I will drop a post directly. I won't be back in the fold for good and all until sometime Saturday. Thanks for covering for me.

Tareth I'm on vacation next week. Should have connectivity in the evenings but I'll definitely be out the next 36 hours. Traveling in the DC area with the offspring.

My apologies fellow gamers. This weekend we are filled to the brim with a youth soccer tourney. I will try to squeeze in a post today between games and a bday party!

Holy weekend from hell!

Watch schedule looks fine by me.

Ha! DM, our caravan wants to take a 'Circle the Wagons' feat when it advances to level 2. I used those rules from Jade Regent with my kids a bit already. They put an emphasis on roles in the caravan and the skills the party should have to play the roles. I think the kids liked them.

Bear in mind I don't have to choose my spells ahead of time, so adding it to my repertoire doesn't hurt me too much. It fits my concept of the character too, so I'm going to add it anyway. The more healing the merrier...

Yeah, Stephanus is picking CLW for his new 1st level spell if/when we level up. Tactically, Zavac's loss is a killer for us. I'll only get a couple castings per day, but at least we'll have some healing available. But I don't even have Heal as a class skill, so while I may dump a point there, Stephanus is still not going to be alot of help from a Heal perspective for awhile.

Ha! We have alot in common.

Or a 66 roll on a critical fumble with a morning star. Holy knee cap!

I was always GM for our group doing Middle Earth homebrew. I thought the ICE stuff was awesome for background material, but never turned the corner in adventure development. I always made up my own plot.

Complete opposite of the Paizo approach.

@Warren - do not taunt Claw Law lest you get your face ripped off. I have a couple editions of RM right here on my shelf...

Dolphin is entitled to medium bash attack per Animal Statistics Chart (p136 Arms Law). A maxed out medium bash does 10 B Unbalancing crit against armor type 7 (lifted from Alligator). Max unbalancing crit reads...

"Send foe flying 10'. He lands on his face. The twisting of his neck causes nerve damage. He is paralyzed from the waist down."

I just had a geekgasm.

@Zavac: Sorry to hear you're dropping. Good gaming.

Stephanus wrote:

Aroden won't care...

I like this saying! Did you get it from a piece of Pathfinder literature or come up with it yourself? I might steal it for an NPC in a Cheliax game I'm running...

I'm just making stuff up. Please use it if it fits your character!

Dammit - probably not. But we pic up +1 damage and +1 vs charm (they might have puppies).

My DM avatar would disagree with that. Taking 10 implies that if given enough time to think about it I would know the answer to any question that merited a DC 17 check or lower, which is a heck of alot. Logically, I think you always have to roll a knowledge check - but I defer to Tareth of course.

Definitely better for my character if you can take 10, though. :)

No worries, I'm just leary of not holding up my end of the character development. My experience with these thing is that it slows down terribly and takes alot of patience to keep the thing going long term. I wouldn't do anything to sap the energy from the thread right now. As long as my character's absence isn't detracting from your story, I'm happy with the pace.

Sorry to have fallen behind the conversation. No work day posting for me during daylight hours I'm afraid.

@Warren - not quite neighbors but close. We're in Largo (small township crushed between St.Pete and Clearwater).

@Hu5tru - business took me to Oslo a couple years ago. I still have occasional business calls with the folks we worked with then. Beautiful country and people. Of course that was in September, not January.

facts.

I was starting to wonder if anyone actually remembered Reagan. Not the 'founding father' that he's been made out to be today, but the actual dude. Ponderous...

I am profoundly sorry to hear that, Luke. I didn't know him on the boards, but that is a terrible loss to us all. Do you know anything about his family or if they are in need of anything?

Yes, he was my neighbor. His wife was also in the game for a long time (Eberk) but she dropped off awhile back. We go too slow :)

He leaves behind two five year old twin boys who play with my kids every day, so we're all kind of circling the wagons right now. What she needs most is for a couple of life insurance companies to do the right thing and pay her. She's been away from work for a long time. Luckily she has a flexible employer and alot of good friends and local family.

Here's my group's entry in the "suckiest PbP ending of all time" contest. Sometimes life really kicks you in the teeth.

This thread is dedicated to the memory of Charles Damel, aka. Yod Akarn. Rest in Peace, my friend.

Here's the new, improved lumber mill interior!

You da robot! That captures the ugliness of the scene nicely. Thanks!

So... does anyone have a copy of the lumber mill maps that were previously published. I'm happy to host them if anyone has a copy.

Never done Juniper before. Where is it?

If its just ducking under low stuff, the kayak's better. Did you guys almost flip that old Grumman? I would never have thought anyone would flip one of those boats. Those things were like aluminum war canoes.

Haha! I have resurrected our OOC thread in order to answer a metagaming question! See, this is what these things are supposed to be used for, but ours keeps plunging to the Underdeeps because we suck.

For those who wish to know where we are in the adventure sequence...

Meta Game spoiler

Thanks to Carborundum for continuing to spread that conversion. It's very cool to see folks' descriptions of how it played out for them. I had both the sea charts and the conversion posted for awhile on my site, but I got concerned when Paizo lost the rights to old Dungeon material and took it down. I'm not sure where the fair use rights to that stuff is held anymore and I didn't want to tick off anyone at my favorite gaming site.

Anyway, if anyone is still looking for the conversion they can email me and I will be glad to send it along. lpotter5@tampabay.rr.com

Oh man. Sandra Garrity sculpts of Pathfinder AP personalities? Sign me up for the subscription.

Hey fellow gamers. I made a digital player-friendly campaign map for my online game. Maybe others will find it useful. It is here.

Sorry guys, we have to stay on hiatus until after this project is complete. I should be able to post again on July 1. Until then, level up your characters.

:)

Gonna have to throttle back some of the content, but my wife and I are about to start running my kids through 'Howl of the Carrion King'. We're running Pathfinder Beta rules until the real thing gets published. This is their third run at the game, so they understand their choices if not the mechanics.

Mark (my son, age 6) is playing a human druid (no name yet). A desert nomad character with a razorscale lizard companion. He's played two fighters and wants to try magic. He's looking to avenge his master's death on a mysterious beast that hunts the hills above Kelmerane.

Rachel (daughter, age 8) is playing a gnome wizard (illusion specialty) named Seetah. She liked the illo of Linni the druid and decided she wanted a wizard version with orange and purple hair and a fennec fox familiar. She may be a budding Pathfinder - depending on if I like the source-book that's coming out. :)

The lovely wife is running a pair of half-siblings. One is a human barbarian named Kade. The other is a half-elf female rogue named Kendra. They'll be looking for Haleena, a figure from their childhood.

You can find the direct response about 1/2 down this page.

I asked this question of James. You cannot crop stuff out of the player's guides and put them online - even though they are free to download. You also cannot use messageboard avatars as icons on online battlemaps.

You can only put online stuff that appeared in the blog. I don't recall Korvosa appearing there.

Same to you buddy. Give Kayla an eastern pinch from us!

Looks like we continue. So far I can't talk the wife into taking a character. I really don't want to see Eberk go, but that's your call.

Eberk is probably doomed - mostly because now I'm rolling for him and not Melissa.. who has far-and-away the hottest dice I've ever seen at any table. There's no way my red fireball is going to produce rolls like that for him. I may have to hunt for a spare die for him.

But I don't really need firm plans for him. All y'all are only as permanent as your smart play and good rolls anyway. Despite how bad the opposition has lost I haven't pulled alot of punches.

Well the project sounds cool, even if it's overwhelming right now. We need to split a sixpack and compare notes sometime. If we ever combined our areas of expertise I bet we could make a ton of money. We'd want my boss as well - Hardware/network software guru. I'll handle applications and glue-ware.

Our project is probably going to be slammed for a couple more weeks, then get sane for a little while, then slam us again. I expect doing something like this four more times between now and the end of next year. Possibly another trip to Oslo, too. The more ass we kick now, the less we'll get ours kicked in the future. Allegedly... So we've tied ourselves to the whippin' post.

Now that we're testing so much I haven't been working from home either, which means I see the kids for about 30 mins every day. That's the toughest part of it. Pam sees too much of the kids and I see too little of them. Eh - you know the drill.

So yeah, distractions are good. More D&D/Pathfinder. And pass the pretzels.

Since we have a discussion thread again and all, watcha working on? Since San Diego I've been putting in 70 & 80 hour weeks to finish this latest project, so I know what you mean about not having the time to keep up.

That may make it tougher to find someone to join our thread. Our pace is pretty pathetic but its better then no game.

How's the wife and youngin? I'd tell you how mine are, but I never see them anymore. OK, enough whining...

Pammy is still in. What say you chuck?

That's cool. I can handle Eberk from here. If you decide later that you want to try again, you know where I live.

What about the rest of you? Chuck & Chris? Are you guys okay to keep going? Do you want to see if someone else wants to join, or do you want to roll with three for awhile?

The grapevine says we may be losing Eberk. Melissa, let me know if you want to drop out. If so that is completely cool. This is definitely not a replacement for the table game, which we have absolutely no chance of reviving right now.

Either way, there's no need to kamikaze the dwarf. I'll NPC him to an organic finish somewhere along the lines if need be.

If Melissa is dropping, what's the opinion of the others in the group? Are you interested in continuing? Do you want to go one with three, or are you interested in making an open call and seeing if someone on the intertubes wants to join?

Hey folks - I posted this question on another thread but maybe this was the better place for it.

Two questions come to mind on reading the policy. You've been very specific about where borrowed art can come from. How do you feel about us using the avatars from the message-boards as tokens for online battlemaps to support PbP games? Like this?

What about art from the products available for free downloading here at the Paizo site? Like the Rise of the Runelords Player's guide and the map of Sandpoint contained? They haven't necessarily appeared in the blog (though many have). Can they be re-posted for player convenience on a site that's registered?

Otherwise I thought the use license was good stuff.

Thanks.

Luke

Two questions come to mind on reading the policy. You've been very specific about where borrowed art can come from. How do you feel about us using the avatars from the message-boards as tokens for online battlemaps to support PbP games? Like this?

What about art from the products available for free downloading here at the Paizo site? Like the Rise of the Runelords Player's guide and the map of Sandpoint contained? They haven't necessarily appeared in the blog (though many have). Can they be re-posted for player convenience on a site that's registered?

Thanks.

Luke

A rematch next year would be excellent.

Go Gators!

What happened to Alabama?

Ummmm. Maybe it was this. ;)

Nope. It's just the season for folks to be busy I think. It's your wife's turn but we're cool going slow here.

for keypond

For Luke...

** spoiler omitted **