Meraki's page

We've still got all our old 1E pawns, like the boxes from Inner Sea World Guide and Villain Codex, so we usually fish them out of there. Pawns are system agnostic, after all!

I'm not sure if they're available physically anymore, but if they still have the PDFs up for sale, you could get those and print the ones you want, maybe.

theLegend76 wrote:

Evan Tarlton wrote:

Any interesting developments with the Empyreal Lords?

Skimming through the book I don't see anything on Tanagaar, not even listed in the Empyreal Lords at the end. So I'm assuming he just was overlooked.

That's true...but we finally have 2E deity information for Kelinahat (She of Ebon Wings). They are very different Empyreal Lords, but overlap mechanically. (And for some reason really do seem to steal writeups from each other.)

I can finally remake my 1e Paladin/Ninja of Kelinahat.

"Kelinahat writeup" is the best thing I've read all day. <3

QUINN. Buddy. Please figure this out. But not too soon, because I would read a whole book of this.

Finally, all my crackpot tinfoil hat theories perfectly sensible headcanons about the Gap can be written in an official Paizo product!

Totally agree with everyone describing the reactions to Desna's death as haunting, though I think my favorite part is this:

"but after a particularly vivid dream (involving my being back in one of Lorminos’s classes and asked to deliver a talk about a research paper I had somehow forgotten to do), my anxiety briefly took hold."

We've all been there, Yivali. T_T

I laughed out loud at “Just admit you like each other, already!” Truly, the enemies to lovers long game. (Though perhaps not that long to a cultivator!) :D

Sure, he doesn't START the story that way, learning it is part of his journey as a character. But I don't really agree that he does nothing else: he works for Vizzini, he befriends Fezzik, he helps Wesley.

I always viewed the "I don't know what to do with the rest of my life" line in the light of a burden being lifted, instead of despairing; he doesn't sound all that upset about it. Right after that, when Wesley says he'd make an excellent Dread Pirate Roberts, he chuckles and seems to be contemplating it.

But ymmv, of course.

I think a good example of the Calistrian idea of revenge is Inigo Montoya. Revenge is a clear focus of his character; it drives him throughout the story, and he doesn't give up until he obtains it. But it doesn't occupy his every waking moment. He's shown to have friendly relationships with people, to banter, to have a sense of humor, to have compassion for others. He's not chasing down the six-fingered man 24/7 and seething in a corner about how much he wants revenge. He's always on the lookout, but he also doesn't let it stop him from doing other things in the meantime.

I think Calistria would approve. :-)

I love the flavor of the Reveler in Lost Glee, though +1 for leaning more into the general entertainer-focused vibes than evil clowns specifically. I think that'd help make it a little less niche as well as avoid tripping up people with a Nope reaction to clowns.

While I appreciate that the 3-part APs allow for a wider range of stories whose scope doesn't fit a 6-part AP, I'd be sad to see the 6-parters disappear. I like spending a lot of time with my characters, getting to know them and seeing them grow, and there's just not as much time to do that with a 3-part AP. My current plan is to chain some together for a "full" campaign (if not 1-20, at least 1-mid-teens), but that could be tricky with some of the more strongly themed ones.

Add me to the list of those who'd ADORE more Numeria! (My chainsaw-wielding bloodrager from my Iron Gods game says hello.) :-)

Personally, the APs with a bunch of well-rounded, interesting NPCs are always my favorites. Paths like WftC, Hell's Rebels, Jade Regent, and CotCT are more memorable to me because of their NPC cast. Maybe it's just that my groups tend to love social RP, but it definitely increases investment in the game for us to have a bunch of NPC friends (and sometimes love interests!) hanging out with the PCs. Sometimes the party even makes friends that the campaign didn't expect us to make!

It makes the campaign feel more like a story and less like it's happening in a table vacuum, imo.

silversarcasm wrote:

Oooooooh im so excited, i was talking recently about how excited I was a certain story thread form legends was brought up again in Impossible Lands and now it seems we're getting a whole ap about it? Lets gooooo

Am sad to see its not a 6 parter though, hope they havent been completely abandoned!

If folks want us to do more 6-part Adventure Paths... PLEASE let us know! The 3 part ones seem to be engaging people more and allow for more stories to be told in a year, and I'm hoping that we'll be able to settle into a rhythum that allows for more frequent higher level 3 part arcs, but if people do still want 6 part ones... we need to know. (And that includes seeing evidence in sales and reviews and the like for parts 4–6 of those Adventure Paths, not just requests at the front end.)

Hopefully this isn't derailing too much, but since it was brought up...count me in the camp that'd love more 6-part APs. I like to run/play long campaigns, and chaining together 3-parters in a way that thematically makes sense can be tricky. (And, as others have pointed out, there are currently more lower-level ones than higher-level.)

This does look very cool, though! Dwarves haven't been something I've been super interested in historically, but I have every confidence this and the Highhelm book are about to change my mind. :-)

Me: Surely, it'll be easy to pick some favorite deities!
[Later]
Me, stumbling around, juggling more holy symbols than Benny from The Mummmy: Too...many....

Of the core deities, Desna's probably my favorite. The fact that she's benevolent but also Deeply Weird and kind of eldritch and aloof in some ways is very cool.

Milani's a classic favorite of mine too; I love the "freedom and revolution" angle" but also that she's a relatively new goddess trying to adapt, like Iomedae's less rules-oriented younger sister.

I've also got a fondness for most of the Eldest, but especially the Lost Prince and Count Ranalc as the most mysterious among them. The Lost Prince's dichotomy of offering comfort to the lost and depressed while (seemingly) remaining so himself has a delightfully tragic flair to it, and the whole mystery surrounding Ranalc and his fate is fascinating to me.

I wouldn't want to worship Vildeis myself, but she fascinates me. I played a warpriest of hers in 1E who eventually ended up losing her connection because she was starting to actually find happiness (I portrayed Vildeis revoking her powers as basically an act of mercy, an "I've taken you as far as you can, poor mortal, now be free" kind of thing.)

Kelinahat hasn't appeared in PF2 yet as far as I know, and all that was detailed about her in 1E was a tiny stub: "Kelinahat is an archon empyreal lord of spies, stealth, and the gathering of intelligence who is also known as She of Ebon Wings. Her followers use guile, subterfuge, and shadow magic to break into evil bastions and return with valuable information." I love the concept of a good-aligned deity of spies, since normally that ends up in more neutral or even evil territory. (Shh I like spies what)

And then there's Grandmother Spider and Besmara and Ydajisk and---

...okay, I should probably stop. :-)

I can't wait to pick this one up!

Bummed that the pawns are going away, I always relied on them for our games. :-( I don't really have the time to mess around trying to make my own, unfortunately, so I guess I'll just be using the ones I already have as stand-ins.

Even if you do kill the sorcerer, it doesn't necessarily have to be the final end of her. I don't know what level the PCs are, but even if they're too low-level to raise her on their own, you've got options. Maybe an associate of the PCs offers to raise her in exchange for a favor later. Maybe one of her family members finds the party to work with them until they can bring her back. Maybe she returns to life without knowing how, but now has these strange dreams every so often...

There are a lot of ways to make dying a complication rather than the absolute end of a character's story, which is what my table generally goes with. Of course, this depends on whether the player wants to bring the character back, so it's worth having a chat with the table about how they want to handle the situation.

What a cool blog! Happy Year of the Tiger! :-)

I like Nidal a lot, less for the torture stuff and more because the concept of a culture around for that long, preserving itself through a direct deal with a deity, is fascinating to me. It's noted in places that they have historical archives dated back further than any currently extant societies, and that's super cool. And I like the shadowy (pun intended, always intend your puns) atmosphere of the place.

Sarkoris is also really neat, given their old culture and their attempts now to reclaim their homeland. I'd love to see more of it.

We haven't (yet) seen a whole lot of Alkenstar, but I love weird west stuff, so I'm looking forward to that AP!

Kaer Maga, for just how off-the-wall it is. It's a bunch of cities within a city, which is cool.

The new Mwangi Expanse book has bumped it way up on my list, too. Plenty of needed updates and some really interesting cities to hang out in!

I have...a lot of favorites. :-)

Funnily enough, that's exactly why Anastasia isn't queen in my table's version of Golarion. :-) They asked her what she'd prefer to do, and she was like "actually, I'd like to just kinda be a person without having to rule anything." So per the end of our RoW game, she was hanging out with her time-shifted twin sister (hey, what's one more historical liberty?), Baba Yaga's been replaced by "Mama Odette" (one of the PCs) and another PC and his Jadwiga boyfriend are ruling Irrisen.

Now I'm thinking "Stasian tech" in our Golarion is because she's become a scientist and is working to popularize it. :-)

I mostly lurk on the forums these days and am not that active, but I love this thread, so I'm jumping in! :-) In addition to the excellent shout-outs already in here, I want to spotlight a few more people whom I've had the pleasure of working with over the last few years:

Jenny Jarzabski is an incredibly creative, fun person with a knack for taking off-the-wall adventure premises and making them work, whether as a writer or a dev. Not everyone could have pulled off managing something like "time-travel linked GenCon special," but she and Thursty pulled it off admirably.

Speaking of Thurston Hillman, he's always someone I look forward to working with. He cares deeply about his co-workers, the freelancers he works with, and the game, and it shows. I also understand, although I've never been fortunate enough to be in a game of his as of yet, that he's a top-notch GM with a knack for making his players cry in the best way possible. ;-)

Michael Sayre has been mentioned before, but in addition to being a talented designer, he's handled the whole upheaval in the past few months admirably. Without getting into specifics, he's been a class act throughout all this, and I want to express my appreciation for that. Michael, you're always great to work with.

Likewise, Mark Seifter has also been mentioned, but I'd like to second the comments about his forum presence being consistently helpful and positive--even when others aren't returning the favor. And, as someone who can barely multiply, his math knowledge awes and alarms me. :-) Like the others I've mentioned above, I always look forward to seeing an email in my inbox from him.

Jessica Catalan joined Paizo at a tumultuous time, and it can't have been easy starting the new job in the midst of everything. In spite of that, I'm sure she's been hard at work, and I can't wait to see what she's cooking up next! Jessica, it was awesome to work with you on the specials this year!

Jason Tondro is witty, fearless, and one of the most principled people I've ever met, and his Twitter (@doctorcomics) is a delight to follow. He's been incredibly helpful in getting information about United Paizo Workers and the union's formation out to the community at large, both on Twitter and in his many, many interviews. Seriously, when does this man sleep? :-)

John Compton is a great dev and a genuinely nice guy who's always been an advocate both for his co-workers and for freelancers. He also seems to have a wry sense of humor which I'm always fond of spotting on any mutual Discords we end up on.

Finally, Andrew White has written probably the best description of a Starfinder adventure--and the adventure itself--of all time, in talking about the Great Grav-Train Robbery. I read this tweet to my game group a couple weeks ago and they were instantly sold. Tech doesn't always get the attention of devs or editors, but it's definitely a vital part of the company!

Devs, editors, customer service, everyone I've worked with: if I didn't name you individually, you are also awesome! I just only have so much time on my lunch break. ^^;

I can't wait to pick up a copy of this and see what you all did in detail! This sounds like it might end up being my favorite PF2 book to date. :-)

Children can often derail an adventure by doing things a rational adult wouldn't.

To be fair...players can often derail an adventure by doing things a rational adult wouldn't. ;-)

Super excited for this path!

VerBeeker wrote:

I read Zo!’s lines in Handsome Jack’s voice.

I've always mentally heard Tim Curry's voice.

Personally I read that in Varrick's voice from Legend of Korra.

My party actually just did this section. I was wondering if they'd figure out right away that Emaliza was lying to them (the rogue has a good Perception), but they didn't. Still, they were suspicious of all Hermean women until proven otherwise. They were side-eying her a little bit due to her request to reclaim the Orb shards, but they couldn't pinpoint anything off about her, so they weren't sure. They also briefly suspected Inizra until she offhandedly mentioned having been born in Taldor (and they found her request less suspicious than Emaliza's).

I just had the letters Uri had be signed "your sister," since it says it doesn't mention a name in the journal. I also don't think Emaliza's relations are probably common knowledge...like TomParker said, Uri's been gone for decades and she seems to be detached from any birth family to the point of forgoing her former last name. I kind of figured that in Hermea, birth relations aren't as important as one's devotion to the city/Mengkare, so that's how I portrayed it.

They eventually figured out Emaliza was the sister while they were investigating the records in the Citadel, then lured her off to Mengkare's lair outside the city and killed her before he returned from Axis. They took the Orb to give to Mengkare as proof of her activities.

Okay, time to pack it in; no monsters will ever surpass these. This blog has won monster-building, folks. :-)

If you're concerned about Plaguestone being too deadly, a simple fix is having the PCs be 1 level above the recommended track. That's what I did when I ran it, and there were still some tough fights, but they made it through just fine. If you don't want to start them at level 2 right away, you could always run an intro encounter or two for them to get the hang of things.

My PCs just assumed that the gate either led to Ravounel or somewhere else the Scarlet Triad was active, because they'd picked up that the Triad was interested in the gates. They didn't know if they'd be getting to Ravounel immediately, but they figured one of the gates would lead there.

Inner Sea Taverns has rules for some tavern games. It's a 1E book, but the games should still work regardless of edition.

Hooray! Hopefully I'll actually have time to submit something this year.

I'm sad to see Amanda leave Paizo, but I'll be excited to see what she does over at Kobold Press! Best wishes for her in her new position!

Postal/courier AP: Aw yeah!

Library AP: *insert Kermit flailing gif* That would be a contender for my favorite AP ever. (Especially if I got to write for it. *cough*)

ZomB wrote:

scary harpy wrote:

Should I ask if the Inner Sea has public libraries here or start a new thread?

PFS scenario Echoes of the Overwatched visits Forae Logos in Absalom, one of the largest libraries in the world.

Good to know. Thanks.

I asked because I thought most medieval libraries were private...and nothing like we think of public libraries today (so I wouldn't expect a section dedicated to children's literature...or magazines).

Now back to the topic: adventures in postal service.

(Brilliant post, Old_Man_Robot. LOL!)

Public libraries as we currently define them are actually a pretty recent development, only dating back to the 19th century or so (at least in Britain & America, not sure about elsewhere). They were actually pretty controversial at first because of bias against "the rabble" being able to study and learn things like the wealthy elite.

Medieval libraries were private, owned by individuals, the Church, or universities, and literacy wasn't anywhere near as widespread as it seems to be on Golarion. We can assume that libraries are probably more common on Golarion since there are more people who could make use of them, although whether or not they'd be what we understand as "public" probably depends on the library.

A postal service/courier service would probably be pretty popular for much the same reason: more people writing letters to each other (unless they're rich enough to afford magical communication). The mail was delivered several time a day in Regency England...big cities in Golarion probably have communication networks that function at least that frequently.

James Jacobs wrote:

I 100% agree witht he use of the word "Lycanthrope". It should not be the word for all werecreatures; that's why we changed it from lycanthrope in 1st edition to werecreature in 2nd.

The only place we talk about lycanthropy in the book is in a single sidebar on page 291, and it's in the context of "Many scholars..." When you see us attribute in-world lore like this, the intent is to frame that lore in a potentially unreliable narrator. Some scholars are wrong, and those who apply the word "lycanthropy" to all werecreatures are not correct (as the sidebar notes) yet they still do so. In the same way we in this world use words like "Kleenex" for facial tissues, "band-aid" for adhesive bandages, or "D&D" for fantasy-based RPGs (couldn't resist that one! :P).

The whole point of the sidebar was to enable the use of the word "lycanthrope" in the game, if only as an often-misused term, so that readers who look back at other 1st edition products aren't potentially confused, and because the word itself is a really neat word and I didn't want it to get completely excised from the game.

As for using real-world words... look at it this way. When we publish books like this, we're translating the words to English (or Italian or Spanish or whatever) so all of us at Paizo can edit them and so all of you out there can read them. None of us can speak or read Taldane or any other made-up language from Golarion, so we don't publish in that language. If we did, words like "lycanthrope" and "tyrannosaurs" would be spelled differently and with a different alphabet and would sound different... as would words like "wizard" or "cat" or "the." :-P

Tolkien did it, so why not Paizo ;-)

Spiders Tolkein, who tried to avoid his day job in favor of writing and created over 10,000 conlangs per year, was an outlier and should not have been counted. ;-)

The issue looks great! I can't wait to dive into it more thoroughly.

Congratulations on the new jobs and promotions, everyone!

Just to add I would be more than happy to be charged for subscription orders in usual time frames and wait for shipment when the warehouse is back up and running. Appreciate Erik's post earlier that this is a decision for later but just wanted to put that out here.

Same here. Some people may well be okay with this, especially if they still get PDFs on schedule, so maybe that could be an option?

I can't say I didn't see it coming, but I'm still bummed. Keeping everyone safe is more important, though.

Now to see if the airlines will refund my tickets...

Narrator voice: They didn't.

For those of you who have to cancel airline flights, most US carriers are waiving cancellation fees or issuing travel vouchers.

They're waiving change/cancel fees, but the travel credits they're issuing have a rather short life (at least for the airlines I booked with). One of them said you had to use the credits within a year of the date of original booking; the other said within a year of a date of issuance. Helpful if you typically travel more frequently, I guess, but completely useless if the next trip you'd be going on is, say, to PaizoCon 2021.

Just something to be aware of.

I can't say I didn't see it coming, but I'm still bummed. Keeping everyone safe is more important, though.

Now to see if the airlines will refund my tickets...

I'm very excited for the [redacted] lil critter I did in here!

Yeah, setting books are usually my absolute favorites, so I'm looking forward to this!

My own personal headcanon (which really has no basis in anything other than me thinking it's neat) is that the end/refresh cycle of the multiverse has been interrupted as of Starfinder times for some reason--perhaps even due to the activities of a bunch of strong mortal heroes! The Gap is due to an incomplete reset that brought back most things from the previous iteration, but certain things are altered or "set back." No one remembers what happened during the Gap because the resulting multiverse is pretty much a reconstruction of the previous one, with some differences, and that period of time was it resetting.

I highly doubt this is actually the case in canon, but *shrugs*. Canon for my table!

I doubt we'll see too much in the way of planet-hopping for PF2, at least for awhile. Eventually, they'll probably sprinkle it in here and there like they did in PF2.

Though personally, I'd love an AP involving ye olde Verces.

[edit: ninja'ed, I see]

Gah. Meant PF1 in the latter bit there. Didn't catch it on the edit, of course.

I doubt we'll see too much in the way of planet-hopping for PF2, at least for awhile. Eventually, they'll probably sprinkle it in here and there like they did in PF2.

Though personally, I'd love an AP involving ye olde Verces.

[edit: ninja'ed, I see]

Michael Sayre wrote:

All of our most popular and memorable NPCs in my home games have been throw-away NPCs that were made up on the spur of the moment because the party did something unexpected.

It's a sobering reminder not to use unsustainable voices for silly one-off NPCs. My wife improvised a lisping unicorn once upon a time, and that goofy dialect haunted her for the rest of the campaign.

My partner once GMed an accidentally-recurring winter wolf NPC whose accent was described by one of the other players as "the wolf that ate Sean Connery." He said it was murder on the throat.

We often have NPCs recur in our games, usually AP NPCs with one-line descriptions. Klarah from Wrath of the Righteous went from a one-off NPC for the party to save in book 1 to

WOTR spoiler:

I assumed OP was looking into self-publishing things from his setting. (Upon re-reading the question, that might not be correct.) If you're just doing stuff for your players in a personal game, you can do what you like. Personal games don't have OGL restrictions.

If you're intending to make your work publicly available for free, that falls under the Community Use Policy. Basically, you can reference Paizo IP as long as you aren't charging anyone for it. That's how things like Wayfinder operate.

The OGL is for commercial use, when you're making something to sell to people.

You could use phrasing like "Worshipers of Punchy Traveler can use rules elements designed for worshipers of a god of martial arts and self-perfection," I believe. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but that kind of vague description seems to be how Legendary does a lot of their plug-ins.)

I had a lot of fun working on my sections for this book, and I'm looking forward to its release! There's a lot of cool stuff in here that I think will appeal to people with a variety of tastes in things that interest them about starships.

-Kendra

There are nucklavees in the last book of Reign of Winter.

** spoiler omitted **

Hmm, that's a good question...but one I don't have the answer to. I wrote it as the

I'm not sure if that was a deliberate change made in development or not. But it does seem unusual.

-Kendra

The path doesn't really say, so it's pretty much up to you. (Though it does say she hasn't actually been letting Radosek mack on her, in spite of his best efforts.)

For my game, she'd essentially been conscripted by Nazhena and Radosek to use her talents for scouting the area and for additional tower defenses. She was from Irrisen, and was pretty much a wanderer. She didn't really like her situation, but didn't see a way out of it until the PCs showed up.

The PCs I ran for ended up talking her down (they had a druid who calmed her ravens) and she joined their group after that.