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I mean, the 'General Discussion' forum is pretty much flooded with threads about CS issues at this point. It's really kind of embarrassing.
Congrats Jim. Good luck! Hopefully you can help to get the company back on track. Big same. I've mostly stepped away from the Paizo forums entirely but just about every time I've poked my head back in I've seen something miserable. We just had yet another person decide this was the place to post their transphobic rant before getting banned. I hope Jeff recovers but I also hope anyone does the right thing and hustles him fully out the door. I've got very little interest in pulling punches these days and people are still thirsty to see an iota of accountability at this company. Ultimately Jeff is in a position of incredible luxury and privilege that to be allowed to step out of his role as president due to health concerns and still get a consulting gig. A kindness I highly doubt would be extended to the rank and file of the company. Jim, good luck, between Jeff's actions and the major competition in the space being WotC the bar is set relatively low but I hope you leap over it. Please listen to the union and please try to make this company into what it promised it was for so long.
Firearm level? (Advanced, early, etc)
A couple of points I'd like to bring up to further elaborate on Atlas's takeaways, having played in a couple of failed Lancer PBP games myself and generally kept abreast of the game's development and creators. 1) Initiative: This game uses alternating initiative, allowing a PC to go and then an enemy and letting the party choose which PC takes their turn in what order. As such, I HIGHLY recommend a smaller party (3-4 max) and setting up a Discord for the OOC chatter as that goes a long way to keeping the players engaged in what is happening in combat and not just on their turn. 2) The game is political and wears its politics on its sleeve. While it would be relatively easy to ignore that aspect of the game's setting, if you do not agree with left-wing politics I suggest using your own setting as you'd be running in contradiction to the game's core assumptions when it comes to worldbuilding. (Personally, it's the only TTRPG setting I've actually ended up invested in as it is the only one I've seen that can seamlessly switch from mediations on power dynamics to GIANT ROBOT FIGHTS to examinations of cycles of inter-generational trauma)
Dang, okay, I'll start looking into some alternatives then. Thanks for the insight.
I tried asking in an older thread but so far haven't gotten a response but does anyone know if there are any plans to release a themed dice set for this AP? I really enjoyed being able to buy the Dead Suns themed set for my players to use in the last session of that AP and would like to be able to do the same with this one, especially because three of my players have never been in any kind of long-running TTRPG campaign.
Power Armor Jockey increases the land speed by 10ft and Experimental Armor allows you to eventually add movement types including a 60ft fly speed. Unfortunately, I am specifically working off a Stellar Mystic Solarian so I've got partial BAB and can't qualify for PA Jockey.
Hey, my google-fu might just be failing me here so forgive me if this question has already been exhaustively gone over elsewhere, but does power armor benefit from movement speed buffs or is your speed always effectively capped at what the power armor gives you? I was looking at building a power armor solarian with the electrical attunement alternate class feature. The energy mode says 'While energy-attuned, your speeds all increase by 5 feet'. Does this apply to movement speeds given by power armor?
I, too, would like to know this. I splurged on sets for all my players to use in the final session of Dead Suns and would like to do so again for Fly Free.
Drift is moving to Proof of Stake any day now we swearThe blockchain Drift. Please ignore the fact that every time a block of transits are processed, another star winks out. We're looking into alternate power sources.
It's ALMOST like concentrating all your staff for an online storefront in one time zone isn't exactly the best plan.
There's also the Wrecking Spells Mystic Epiphany and the Harmful Spell magic hack. Each add 1/2 level to damage as an untyped bonus if I remember..
Does Spell Sergeant or any of the other methods of improving spell damage not work with scaling cantrips?
@Bob Except that's not really what's happening. The objective morality they have attempted to produce and reinforce in the setting has generally been sold as following a generally moderate/left and relatively progressive bent. It's been more or less the stated goal of the creatives and of the company. What is being called for here is greater internal consistency both to appease the customer base and to provide a higher quality product. On top of that, not everyone is really willing to engage with media that props up objectionable material as 'good actually', especially not media that actively requires personal participation and interaction with it. If the goal were to provoke that sort of tension between players and setting as is the case in, say, Warhammer 40k, then it would have been better signposted.
Again, this is pretty much a Thermian Argument, I'm going to suggest watching a Folding Ideas video to illuminate why people would have a problem with this line of reasoning: for convenience I promise it isn't very long
To everyone sorting through this thread, I highly recommend looking up Folding Idea's video on Thermian Arguments as to why in universe explanations do not somehow give this a pass.for convenience Thanks, I'm posting from my phone and doing links on a touch screen is pain for me
Not engaging and actively refuting faulty and often dangerous arguments allows for a false perception of tacit endorsement by the community at large, which, by my metrics is far, far worse. To everyone sorting through this thread, I highly recommend looking up Folding Idea's video on Thermian Arguments as to why in universe explanations do not somehow give this a pass. Personally, I am always supportive of efforts to either reclaim or recontextualize problematic coding in fantasy and sci-if media. If it can't be salvaged, it should be ditched. If there is going to be dwarf prejudice against orcs and goblins, it should be represented realistically with complex facets to the conflict and active movements to fight such prejudice. Any god of the capital g 'Good' cannot also be a god of prejudice. There is no such thing as a 'good racist'.
Ah, begun the process of winding forums down has. Certainly feels that way. Paizo seems so disinterested in actually maintaining the community they've courted for years.
Also - I just realized today that I’ve been pronouncing TNG as “Gorbachev” in my head this whole time. Somehow the name still works.
Gotta love the idea that we're actively seeking out random threads and performing loyalty tests on unsuspecting forum goers. I've certainly restricted myself to relevant threads and only brought things up when they are either relevant to the conversation at hand or someone has come out with an impressively bad take.
This thread just can't keep on the topic but perhaps that's how it best illustrates where we are :) 100%
didn't we have this discussion already? Yup, but some people refuse to listen and allowing their bad takes to go unchallenged creates the false appearance of acceptance by the community, functionally shifting the Overton Window for the site and encouraging others with equally bad or worse takes to come out of the woodwork. It's a war of attrition, but these things have to keep being said. Hopefully, the ones with truly heinous opinions will go mask-off and get themselves banned. At the same time, they're hoping to sap the mental and emotional energy of the rest of us until we're too tired and frustrated to continue. This is how bad faith arguments are used.
My statement was actually intended to be neutral. Sara Marie was fired, Diego left and that created a vacuum. She took some actions and now has to step up. I'd be interested in hearing what she plans to do and the steps she plans to take in good faith but I'm not about to start celebrating her. For better or worse the damage is done and actively seeking to drive her off achieves nothing, it certainly won't magically restore the jobs and goodwill of Sara and Diego. A lot of people are exceptionally dissatisfied with Paizo and the directions they are choosing to go in. Chief among the reasons is the utter lack of transparency with the community they actively chose to foster and profit from. Hearing from someone, anyone, and seeing them act upon stated plans and goals would be good for the community.
There's this post from the 'Paizo, it's time for a change' thread, made on Nov 15, 2021: To clarify, Tonya lobbied for and was given the Director of Customer Service and Community position. This was in effect a demotion for Sara. A few weeks later Sara was fired by Tonya. I quit when she was fired. So... yeah, not exactly a flattering reporting of events.
A bed was made and now someone must lay in it.
Okay, yeah, the slavery convo is getting way off topic. If no one else steps up, I'll make a new thread after work tonight.
Man, I'm sorry it came to this for you FD. Sadly, this is something I predicted when I first heard about the mis-management coming to a head. I said it then and I'll say it again. When people start cancelling and leaving, it won't be for a short-term boycott, it will be because they are burned out from having their trust abused and will be leaving permanently.
Almost hilariously tone-deaf. There are so many more compelling stories you could tell to give the reason for the end of slavery in a city-state. The end of slavery for the end of slavery's sake is a good first step. In a setting where there are literally gods of good around, abolition movements should have been around from the jump.
I would think the 'vague bugbear' would be something more akin to Phantasmal Killer but far less lethal
When you can do the bare minimum but don't, your pulling a Paizo management. When you can do the bare minimum but don't and then hire someone known for doing the opposite, you're pulling a Paizo management. Fixed it for ya.
Indeed there is a TTRPG company that does this Maybe doing more than the law says you have to is a good idea?
I'm getting tired of arguing this point. Hiring lawyers that do not explicitly specialize in DEIB is a transparent ploy. Hiring lawyers at all is just an effort to cover their asses against legal action by those they hurt. This is a very public and familiar playbook. The policy was transphobic, the upper management is toxic, there investigation done. If they want their efforts trusted, get the union involved or make the sort of organizational changes that would prevent things from getting this far again in the future. Hire the sort of people that explicitly specialize in his stuff to get the job done or don't bother telling us about it.
This is the execs realizing they have profoundly screwed up the situation and circling the wagons against accountability before their opposition is fully organized. Don't ascribe attitude based on whether you agree with my analysis. If we start shouting 'cynic' and 'naive' back and forth nothing is going to get done. The fact of the matter is that they were not hired by the company, they were hired by the execs. Execs do not solely compose the company or even make up a notable percentage. If they did worker strikes would be meaningless. The body that specifically works to represent the vast majority of the people in the company (ie the 'company') is the union and they were neither consulted nor (to my knowledge) endorse this move. To be clear, my argument is that the execs have interests that are in opposition to those of the workers and a significant number of us, hiring the law firm without bringing the union in demonstrates a level of bad-faith, and that this all follows a corporate script that ends with them trying to sweep this all under a rug. It's not cynicism, it's a healthy dose of Marx mixed with having watched this sort of thing happen repeatedly in the video game industry.
Any group hired on solely by the execs is going to have a vested interest in making their clients happy. Bolded for emphasis I would argue that we have compelling evidence that the position of the Paizo execs is, in fact, the opposite. Between the repeated allegations of toxic upper management and the exceptionally hollow corporate apologia. Where the problems of the company are coming from is painfully obvious. They don't need a bunch of suits with little to no skin in the game to identify whether something is transphobic or not. They need to listen to trans people and trans people have been very clear.
Any group hired on solely by the execs is going to have a vested interest in making their clients happy. That vested interest represents a distinct conflict of interest with the stated goal of performing an honest investigation. However, it does not create a conflict of interest if their goal is merely to give the appearance of doing something while protecting their clients' interests and possibly making sure they are legally protected against any potential lawsuits from the people they have hurt and exploited. The only way I would trust a law firm hired to perform an investigation as a neutral third party is if they were hired as part of a joint action by the execs and the union or just the union. This is the execs realizing they have profoundly screwed up the situation and circling the wagons against accountability before their opposition is fully organized.
Yeah, bad lawyers are illegal over here. ... or they charge an arm and a leg.
I guess managers/owners who abuse their power and don't respect their workers hire people like themselves for the other management positions. To me this reads like a company producing RPGs and seeming to occupy one of the very few inclusive spaces in the TTRPG industry which was actually the opposite in the way it treated its employees. As if that whole persona was a lie and mask has been ripped off. Execs and their flunkies are not and never have been the whole company. They're just parasites latched on and benefiting from the work of others. I'm not going to try to tell you to spend money on a company you aren't comfortable with supporting but the people that worked hard to make Pathfinder such a wonderful and inclusive game are still there. I'm still hopeful the union can hold those responsible for the abysmal conditions to account and push for real change, change that might see the return of at least some of the wonderful folks who the execs have chased off. If we keep raising a stink about the creeps in power, we might even be able to force change there too. This isn't Activision, they don't have the power of someone like Bobby Kotick. My ideal world is definitely seeing Paizo reorganized into a worker-owned cooperative but while the union was a heck of a surprise, I think that might be a bridge too far.
The law firm is pretty obviously a cynical move. Someone did some checking into them (too tired to remember who at the moment) and what they found is not encouraging. Expect to hear a lot of corporate waffling and refusal to take responsibility.
Man, it really sounds like the execs are profoundly toxic and incompetent and this company is operating in spite of them and not because of them. Some SERIOUS changes need to be made.
Eh, the only published setting that really seized my imagination was the core setting for Lancer. A lot of TTRPG settings just feel like the side notes of someone else's campaign scrubbed of certain specifics to me
Regardless, institutional knowledge is a thing and if someone's role is rendered redundant by an org-chart alteration, you are frequently better served by retaining that person and finding a new role for them in the company. At the very least it allows you to keep that institutional knowledge on hand. The way this has been handled just reeks of an ill-conceived power grab.
The theist/atheist thing is actually something I really appreciate. I'm pretty profoundly agnostic IRL but the dialogue between my philosophical understanding of faith and how it has been presented in TTRPGs has really led to a much deeper understanding of the subject. I've only gotten more tolerant of religious ideologies IRL but, ironically, I am increasingly loathe to play a character of faith in TTRPGs because of how having an 'actual factual' god feels like it cheapens acts of faith.
I held off on reading this all day so I wouldn't spend my whole work shift fuming. Seems I was right to do so. What we got was a lot of corporate apologia complete with an impressive non-apology for an objectively transphobic policy and no real public-facing efforts to visibly address obvious problems apart from an executive-lead investigation into problems reportedly caused by the executives and upper management. It makes you sound like Ubisoft. You do not want to sound like Ubisoft. You even now have an organization that could perform that investigation without nearly as egregious a conflict of interest. The Union. Congrats, you failed successfully. Essentially unless the union backs up your efforts and cosigns them, I'm back to assuming the 'Leadership Team' is out of touch, if not overtly exploitative. Hopefully UPW can force some healthy changes here. This token effort was barely enough to buy some more time from me, mostly so I can stay apprised of the efforts of the union, but you have likely permanently lost the trust and respect of many people that thought you had their interests at heart. You've certainly lost mine. My sympathies go out to those who feel betrayed and hurt by this profoundly mediocre response.
It's almost like people want to see their values reflected in the products they buy and the companies they patronize or something.
Humor can be a lot like food; not everybody gets it. Also like food it can do serious harm if not approached with care.
Tell them a random guy in the internet loves it. Seriously, I find it bizarre RPG layouts aren't a solved problem at this point, but clearly it isn't so I give all my thanks to those who do a bang up job.A dear friend of mine does their layout!For serious. At this point Lancer is the only d20 game that I hold a high opinion of. Also give props for their layouts while we're at it.Shoutout to the Lancer RPG's discord for having a public ban log (mostly full of spam bots) so people can clearly see that bigotry/general chud-ism is unwelcome. Lancer is great, Massif Press is great, their community is amazing. A lot of the gaming industry could stand to learn some things from them.
No, that's fair, my irritation is getting the better of me. I've been taking a break from this whole thing for the sake of my wellbeing and I think I'll give it another week before stepping back into the trenches.
43 days and counting 52 days and counting by my measure. Just popping in to drop this fun note into the thread and check up on the situation to find... nothing substantial. Have we tried serenading him? Probably won't work but I'm willing to try anything at this point.
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