Mage Evolving's page

Pretty much within the mechanical restrictions of size and obvious drone status. There is a drone mod in one of the supplements that allows your drone to look organic at least superficially which opens up more options.

https://www.aonsrd.com/DroneMods.aspx?ItemName=Lifelike%20Appearance

Another quiet week so no update.

I appreciate the updates but I do have a question. Are you actively reaching out to Prodos/Archon each week or passively checking whether they've updated you of their own accord?

A bunch of fans, on Paizo's own Message Boards, speculating about why Starfinder (the game they are talking about) isn't talked about by more people.

The irony.

I'm going to agree with that first part but unfortunately likely for the opposite reason you said it. The opinions that might be most valuable to the company are those of the players who either stopped or never started playing and you're less likely to find them posting in a timely fashion here unless they're also engaged with PF. I only come here every once in a while to see if there is an update on the miniatures debacle and haven't bothered to log in for a while since I don't need to do that just to check a single thread for "no news" weekly updates.

What turned me off of Starfinder? There were alot of reasons honestly and they're likely to be hotly debated as the complete opposite preference is perfectly valid as well. I was drawn in at first by my positive (albeit short) experiences with PF1 during the Dark Times (D&D 4e) and the consistently good art. As a long time player of 3.x, I was obviously familiar with the basis for the heavily modified rules but skeptical that they'd work well in a scifi setting. To Paizo's credit, they never pretended that this was scifi but rather science fantasy so they in no way mislead me; I simply hoped that the mashup would have turned out better in practice than I felt it did. Additionally, I wasn't a fan of this being a future version of the Pathfinder setting though I fully understand why they'd want to mesh the two together. In my case, I simply would have preferred a dedicated scifi game where firing a futuristic space laser was mechanically different than letting loose an arrow from a bow and were the rich background of fantasy dwarves, elves, and orcs had nothing to do with adventures in space.

The game seemed to dip its toes into each familiar niche of the genre but never seemed to fully jump in. There was hacking... but it was basic. There was space combat... but it felt like a completely different game and (for my mystic character) usually amounted to just an assist role for someone else's shot as I either didn't meet any of the criteria to be good for a specific role or my stats weren't good for just manning a secondary gun. I liked the new races and classes but the traditional fantasy races felt crammed in for me and brought down that aspect of the game. I could see the care and effort put into this (unlike say Palladium's Rifts which felt like it was cobbled together on sequential all nighters across multiple decades the nights before each book was due at the printers) but it just didn't gel for me. It didn't feel like it did particularly any of the scifi elements well because it was trying too hard to do everything at once; it was truly the jack of all trades, master of none.

And then there is the ongoing mess of the Ninja Division miniatures campaign. Paizo isn't directly responsible for that but indirectly I don't feel they both thought it through initially (the warning signs were absolutely there for ND to screw it up royally) and didn't handle the aftermath well either whether due to contractual non-disparagement reasons or simply "not my problem" thinking. Well, it was and continues to be their problem.

That's my two cents. As I said before, I fully expect others to disagree as I'm sure that some of my personal bugbears with the game/system are reasons others actually were attracted to it... but I figured I'd mention them in case it helps to get another perspective. I can't comment as to whether the game is actually less popular as frankly I've stopped following it online (except for a foray to the forums for a few seconds every week or two) or purchasing the products. I can say though that when I was excited about playing the game (and did play for about a year) despite my misgivings that outside of this forum my attempts to generate interest with the general gaming public didn't garner much response. YMMV.

Yoshua wrote:

Seriously, every community member should be inflamed that a Paizo employee with access to our personal and financial information has done this and doubled down.

After the implied death threats made against Paizo employees in one of the very first threads on this? I'm very disinclined to care sadly.

So the justification is that two wrongs make a right? How very 2020 of you.

Unless it was the same poster who the president addressed (and you have verifiable proof of it), it has no bearing on what happened most recently in this thread. Additionally, call me old fashioned but I hold highly paid company executives to a higher standard than random internet pundits of indeterminate age. YMMV.

This thread has certainly taken a turn for the worse. If a company executive think that posts are so egregious then warn/ban the poster as per your own existing rules instead of resorting to quasi-doxxing and veiled threats. Just keep in mind that you're likely treating your own customers who cummulatively lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a harsher fashion than you are the company that took the money.

I appreciate the update even if there is no news. You *WILL* get some flak from some (and honestly for good cummulative reason) for coming in here without tangible progress but I think it is the right thing to do both for the brand and the company. Pazio screwed up in choosing ND and the company and especially your customers paid dearly for that choice (customers in actual lost money and Paizo with potential earnings lost). Posting here on a regular basis is the right thing to do and the first step in earning back some (definitely not all but simply some) of the trust that disappeared along with all the funds put into ND's account.

Let me tell ya, the people burned by Prodos, and then Archon, for the Aliens vs Predator debacle still show up everytime Prodos/Archon start up a new venture to warn people that they should be aware of the companies history.

This is going to stick with Paizo. It will be talked about in the community every time Paizo promotes new lines that require crowd funding.

And, FWIW in reference to your earlier post response, I think both those are reasonable responses by customers. I got screwed over in ND's Robotech project; in that case, I personally consider the simple majority of blame to be on Palladium but given ND's ongoing history of failures that they also played a significant part. I pinky swore that I'd post an accurate and honest warning to potential customers once for each dollar of product promised that I didn't receive when I see their names mentioned in regard to other projects. I'm still probably over 100 posts away from my stated goal by my estimate but at least in my case I got half my rewards (albeit in a finicky, unnecessarily complicated, and inferior way). Regardless, ND's history should have been a red flag for Paizo to put additional safeguards but they didn't. I fortunately found out about the Starfinder minis after the initial funding ended but I was seriously considering becoming a late pledge after the fact; ultimately, it was the involvement of ND (who wasn't yet showing their true colors on Starfinder) and my experience with Robotech that convinced me to instead just wait for the project to potentially hit the shelves or to buy out a pledge on the secondary market once it delivered. I'm glad that I was able to avoid this minefield unlike my first experience with crowdfunding.

It is a bit odd when compared to the layout of the other movement types.

Swimming wrote:

You can move your full swim speed while swimming, and you can use the run action while swimming, provided that you swim in a straight line.

Climbing wrote:

You can move your full climb speed when you use the move action while climbing, but you cannot run.

The section on Swimming tells us we can run, the section on Climbing tells us we cannot, and the section on Flying is silent.

I'm glad Pathfinder 2 is a bit more consistent with its wording. Maybe Starfinder 2 will be as well.

LOL, that's some serious Goldilocks and the Three Bears game design there. :) Thanks for letting me know about the others as I had focused on fly specifically in my own search before posting.

FWIW, they said on facebook that they had reduced capacity due to the postal shutdown in Poland and then later announced that they switched over to manufacturing facemasks and PPE for domestic use for the time being. It's frustrating but until the pandemic is over tabletop gaming production takes a backseat to other stuff.

Apparently there will be news on Monday.

https://www.facebook.com/archonstudio/posts_to_page/

"Jarek Ewertowski Yes, wave 3 will be announced Monday"

For those rejoicing at ND's departure and Archon/Prodos' arrival, please investigate Archon/Prodos' treatment of their Alien vs Predator kickstarter backers. I'd link the kickstarter campaign but they voluntarily took down their own kickstarter page (along with thousands of negative comments) with a copyright claim because they couldn't change what they posted earlier. They then said that backers should join a facebook group for official updates and communication; if you joined but complained publicly about not having your pledge despite seeing the same products for months/years on your local store shelves, you were booted from the group and blocked.

After 5 years, only 20% of backers had their full pledges and about as many didn't have any part of their pledge despite the same exact products sitting on store shelves for years by their own count in an update in 2018. Many of the backers who did get all or part only had it because they sweetened the pot for Prodos/Archon by saving them money on shipping by picking up the pledge at conventions Prodos/Archon were attending or by placing additional orders on their direct webstore.

You may be wondering why I keep using the two company names together like that. It's because convientenly after the failure to fulfill AVP put a big stain on their reputation, Prodos transferred their assets to Archon (a new company created in another EU country founded conveniently by the father of the head of Prodos); obviously the debt/liability from their other ventures didn't follow them to the new company. They then ran their next (one or two?) kickstarters under yet a third company in the US with no mention of either Prodos/Archon until gamers at Boardgamegeek sleuthed out the truth. The AVP license recently ran out and, despite multiple attempts at communciation, some backers still reported that they never got any of their rewards.

Have they been doing better since the AVP fiasco with regards to fulfilling their kickstarter rewards? Yes, they have. When things go well for them and everything is under their control, they do seem to live up to their obligations. But the only record we have of them with regards to a financial failure is the AVP campaign and they were perfectly willing to give backers the short end of the stick permanently while the rest of their business went on as normal. Given that Starfinder backers are a similar type of albatross hanging around their corporate neck just like AVP backers, I wouldn't get your hopes up too high.

I sincerely hope they do better this time... I'm simply not counting on it. I have the luxury of fortunately missing out on the kickstarter so have no money at stake either way. My only interest in it at this point is simply to get around a half dozen figs from backers on the secondary market.

Just wanted to check in and let you know that with the holidays, I do not foresee being able to check in with our Licensing Manager or Execs for news until after the new year. I will follow up with them & this thread on Monday, January 8th, 2019.

I appreciate you checking in even if you don't have any information. Given that it has been almost exactly 3 months since Ninja Division bothered to update your customers on this project, I sincerely hope that you'll have concrete information and possibly a plan of action regarding how to proceed after January 8th. I don't expect good news nor any miracles from Paizo but rather just something more definitive to go on than a generic statement about patience and hope. Ninja Division is burning your bridges with your customers as this isn't a typical retail situation where the only thing for players to worry about is a delay in an upcoming product; a half million dollars of your customers' money already spent on your brand is at stake.

And now I'm in the situation that, even if by some miracle I got my all-in pledge, I no longer want it.

The window in which I could have started a Starfinder campaign with my group has passed.

Frankly, I'm now so soured on a whole system for which I was originally really enthusiastic that I wouldn't run a campaign even if the opportunity arose.

Yeah, I don't think that Paizo acknowledge that type of experience enough publicly or recognize the long term significance for the game that it has. Let's go over the early adopter (the most loyal type of customer) experience for the game if you went all in. You got a book that fell apart almost instantly (admittedly they fixed that after the fact but it could take months and reports now show some replacement books suffer a similar if delayed problem) and at best got a dozen of the miniatures out of over a hundred funded with people reporting that even that tiny fraction were frequently of dubious quality. Have there been bright spots? Sure, the adventure paths and the boxed sets are popular quality products but it doesn't negate that the core experience has been deeply flawed.

I don't believe that Paizo are in any position to force Ninja Division's hand so I don't expect that but I do expect a public acknowledgement of just how much of a bad situation it really is as opposed to just taking a just hope and wait and see approach publicly. I'd also hope to see in the case of a failed crowdfunding venture like this to see what they did to ensure its success in the first place knowing that ND had a long history of at best delayed projects and what their plan is going forward. It's one thing if a company's joint venture with another takes a nose dive as I don't think customers deserve any "insider" knowledge if their own money wasn't wasted but it's another when that initial capital is put up by the end customers and they're the ones left with little to no product to show for such a sizable monetary input. YMMV.

I can't speak for anyone here but myself but I backed the Robotech Tactics kickstarter by Ninja Division and Palladium and that failed spectacularly. For four years, the owners of that IP did the same thing that Paizo is doing now publicly despite the obvious serious problems with fulfillment and I can guarantee you that I'll never buy another Robotech product until they lose the Macross license. They chose a temporary single licensee over thousands of their own customers and let the former screw over the latter. I just hope that Paizo doesn't burn bridges with those types of customers by their own public (in)action.

I'm not a backer as I got into Starfinder after the close of the kickstarter (fortunately) so can't respond directly to backer comments there; I figure the next best thing is here.

Some backers are discussing when Kickstarter itself will become involved. The answer is never. My proof? The first kickstarter I ever backed, Robotech RPG tactics.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm

After $1.4 million dollars and 5 years (4 years of which they released NOTHING of their "wave 2") of telling backers that they were diligently working on the project, they announced weeks before they LOST the license to the IP that they supposedly ran out of money 4 years earlier and never had a realistic chance of meeting their remaining obligations to backers (about 2/3 of the sculpts in the most popular pledge). They were reported hundreds of times and the only thing kickstarter did was send them a message when they would go MONTHS without an update to remind them to communicate with backers. That's it. The company who owns the IP (Harmony Gold) didn't do anything publicly either at all and just avoided the question with some boilerplate answers when asked at cons. Privately, they did extend the license for a year for free but that only came out when Palladium finally admitted they were bailing on the project.

Oh, and that project was actually the very first Ninja Division worked on and the company was actually formed specifically to do so.