Matt Staggs's page

Thought I'd let you guys know that I reviewed these two products for Random House's Suvudu.com. Hoping this will bring some more players to the fold! Check it out.

Colleagues,
High human races have been a standard fantasy trope for a long time, with Atlanteans, Numenoreans (and arguably) Melniboneans and Valyrians being examples. Usually these strains of humanity are presented as coming from ancient, advanced cultures, often with great acumen at magic and perhaps access to forbidden or forgotten technologies. I've also noticed that they're usually healthier, smarter and generally more beautiful than run of the mill or common humanity.

I'm curious if you've ever played with such a concept in your Pathfinder game, and how you worked it all out mechanically. Did you just use the rules for Elves?

I would be very reluctant to have any one other than the author do the adaptation, or a team who has a very solid grasp of the body of written work to be adapted. To me very few worlds based on literary works are good adaptations to tabletop play.

However, please do not take this as disparagement - as we have seen over the past two decades or so, settings from literature can be successfully adapted to game play. I love the Belgariad/Mallorean series of 10 books (and its three or four follow-up books), but I do not think it would make a good setting to game in. Certain concepts from that series are ones I strongly tend to use in gaming, however.

No, I hear you. I tend to mix and match myself, most often brazenly borrowing from sources literary (R.E. Howard, Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, Poul Anderson), folkloric (Anglo-Celtic myth usually gets a workout) and historic (ever read "A Distant Mirror"?). I've not done much in the way of straight-forward literary adaptation.

Still, after reading Jesse Bullington's "The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart" or James Enge's "Blood of Ambrose" the temptation is certainly there.

So I haven't gotten my book yet and I want to hear more about what people like in the new rules instead of hearing another complaint about nerfing. So what do you like?

I'm fond of the new, simpler skill system. I hate the half-ranks and formulas. I like that I can just make a few choices and I'm ready to go.

Although I suspect you're talking about the system itself, I have to add that I like the production of the book, as well. It's just a nice looking product. Good illustrations, clean lay-out and durable binding. High quality.

First and foremost, I'd like to say hello to all of the other Pathfinder players here. I just recently got my core book and have not been able to put it down. To say that it's gotten my creative juices flowing as a GM would be an understatement. I finally feel like "the world's most popular role-playing game" is mine again - no longer unduly convoluted, nor over-simplfied, and most of all, not a tabletop version of a MMORPG. This is fantasy gaming done right.

Moving on to the topic of this thread, I'd like to know what you think about adapting various fantasy novels to Pathfinder. Are you interested in playing in other people's milieus? How would you feel about tampering with canon, particularly in the case of longstanding series? What novels would you adapt, were you able to do so? How would you represent the characters in the game?