Michelle A.J.'s page

The morality of necromancy on Golarion isn't about forcing others to do your bidding. If it was, every enchantment spell would have the evil tag. It's about disrupting the cycle of souls and damaging the fabric of reality (according to Phrasma at least.)

Summoning spells don't do that.

We appreciate you, Maggie <3

So either the community was told that a user was suspended in error, or the user was suspended by one member of the CS team and unsuspended by another. If it is the former, that is frustrating and disappointing. If it's the latter, that is inexcusable.

The user in question has gone well beyond 'dogwhistles' and has been in the territory of actively hostile for quite some time. If decisive action can't be taken in such a cut and dry case as this, then I agree with the OP's statement that these forums are an unsafe place. Leadership has proven over and over again that they aren't willing to take the necessary steps to protect the community, even when their own staff ask them to.

How many months has it been since the first "Give us a chance" message? How many chances does this make?

Happy New Year! Thank you for sharing your stories and giving us these fantastic items!

The terwa lords stuff in this volume is really bothering me. Like, they're violent expansionist ethnonationalists who you're expected to sit and have a nice chat with while they spread their propaganda?

I don't want my players to miss out on the new spells and opportunities here but I can't in good faith run this as written.

Perhaps the child of the scout leader could have been the only survivor of the fight and the party can help them to recover and join the magaambya and get them into an environment where they can get away from Terwa influence?

Would appreciate any input from other people.

I won't go too into detail about ways that you can run this, because I don't really think I can give an unbiased answer here. If you want your players to find the scrolls without interacting with the camp, they could be on the bodies of the iruxi where they fight the graveknight.

I would avoid making the child the sole survivor, as the idea of taking them away from their culture for their perceived benefit plays into its own colonial tropes and very quickly strays into some bad territory.

Just curious: Who wrote the section on Tehialai? Polynesian culture is seldom represented in RPGs let alone mainstream media, and I'm curious about the inspiration and author of the piece.

That would be James Case. He goes into detail about his inspirations on Twitter

Phenomenal work everybody! This is an absolutely amazing read, easily one of my favorite RPG books across any line.

Yeah. Portraying incredibly graphic racialized violence can cause harm. It can retraumatize people. Portraying 'bad things as bad' doesn't change the fact that they are traumatic to large swathes of the population. It's the reason why content warnings and rating systems exist. It's the reason Paizo doesn't allow sexual assault or harm to children in their published content.

And you're right, the company isn't obligated to do anything. But they chose to do it. Sorry if that sucks for you. I call it a win.

Also you don't know what the word whitewashing means, please stop using it incorrectly.

I'm not gonna quote your message cause you are out here writing mad essays that really just demonstrate that you aren't actually listening to what anyone has to say and you are ignorant to a lot of larger conversations happening.

There have been many, many conversations about problematic content that Paizo has published in the past. They happen all the time. The fact that you are not a part of those conversations does not mean that they aren't happening. What may seem sudden to you has been building up for years. And your demands that everyone rehash all of those conversations for your benefit are unreasonable.

Also yeah, a lot of Black people do think 12 Years A Slave and movies like it are harmful. Again, you are really just putting your own lack of awareness on blast. I highly recommend you take a step back from this conversation and reexamine yourself.

I think there's a pretty popular song out there about what you should tell nazi punks to do?

I'm starting to be reminded of that youtube video someone linked earlier.

Like, I think you are partially right in that modern political trolls don't really do it for attention per say, but it still might be best to not engage with them because what they actually want to do is to attract an audience of bypasses and 1) make it seem like they are winning the argument to the audience 2) try to make you seem unreasonable to the audience.

Its why I'm super skeptical of people who refuse to address what you actually said to them and either nitpick one topic in your argument to nitpick or completely deflect it either way and continue making accusations

(that said, I don't think letting them go unchallenged is good either, but I don't really know what is optimal way to deal with them anyway besides that trying to debate them earnestly doesn't really work)

Generally speaking? You don't debate them on their terms. You don't let them dictate the conversation. You say, "I can see that you are arguing in bad faith. You are a bigot and I am not going to engage with your sealioning/gish galloping/strawmanning. The humanity of others is not a debate."

Usually with less nice words, but this forum has policies against that.

K.

keftiu wrote:

Leon Aquilla wrote:

I'm disappointed that the mods have opted to leave some incredibly rude posts at the top. It's clear that certain vulgar opinions are permitted.

What’s “rude and vulgar” about wanting more diversity in leadership?

The racist implication that people who share their skin tone form a sort of monolithic gestalt collective for starters. Representation is cool, but representation for representation'sake is harmful.

Do you think the persons were hired because their impressive CVs or because Lisa Stevens, like Robin D'Angelo, feels uneasy around black people?

Humbly,
Yawar

That you don't even know the difference between diversity and representation is evidence enough that you are out of your depth for this conversation, and I think the best thing you can do is excuse yourself from it before you embarrass yourself further.

What do people think of introducing the students from this book during the events of earlier books? Jumimo most of all could be around, and I'm thinking the others likely join during the events of books 1 or 2. Anyone think its narratively preferable to hold them in reserve so there's some new students to figure out in book 3?

I think it certainly makes sense for Jumimo to be around for the earlier books, at least as a background NPC. And it could even help expand on his character arc. I would probably avoid including any more of the other new students though, just to avoid juggling too many pre-existing relationships. (There can be as many as six depending on how players handle previous adventures, even without making any changes.)

What culture is Fardrik, one of the students introduced in this book, supposed to belong to?

Fardrik is Vidric. While all Vidrics faced hardships under colonial rule, he also dealt with additional discrimination. Outside of that, the specifics of his background will depend on how you choose to tell his story and what your table feels comfortable exploring.

Excellent work everyone! Guns and Gears is truly a fantastic book and I can't wait to play with all of the awesome stuff in it.

Their carrd is also linked above with a full list of credits!

I ship it.

While I understand being upset the circumstamces, this should be about celebrating the work and accomplishments of people in our community. Luis, Joseph and Diego are all fantastic writers who have done so much to push for diversity at Paizo. They should be allowed their moment to shine and get the recognition they deserve.

I do love the poppets, and I love every shop in this book! Awesome work everybody!

dot

I think people who want a price increase should petion a SUPPORTEMPLEYEES "promo" code for 10% extra provided the extra income goes to the employees or create a GoFundMe for the employees directly.

Humbly,
Yawar

Hey.

Buddy.

Listen.

If you aren't willing to spend ten extra bucks to support the people who create your LUXURY hobby product? That's fine. Pathfinder is already an incredibly generous game. They post all of their rules online for free. You could play the game without ever spending a dime.

But it's insulting to even imply that paying employees a living wage is in any way comparable to charity. They work their asses off and they deserve to get paid for it. Anything less than that is unacceptable. If increasing the costs of the books is how they earn that wage, then we should all be in favor of it.

One is a crawling hand that became giant and the other is a giant's hand that started to crawl.

Congrats and well done everybody!

What an awesome list of writers! The more I hear about this book, the more excited I get!

Am I blind? Where is the player's guide?

Blog post here

I haven't seen if this was posted elsewhere in the thread, but does anyone else have an issue with the bookmarks in their PDF stopping at the start of Chapter 1?

I had the same issue. I was wondering if it was just me.

Huh, I didn't know they were shapechangers, just never looked much into them. That could be fun for sure!

In fact, most anadi in mainstream society spend the majority of their time in a humanoid form *because* they know so many people are afraid of spiders and they don't want to be judged.

Understandable if you still don't want to include them, but I think it's a very interesting dynamic to explore.

Your branch is a major you choose based on your interests and values, not something you get arbitrarily assigned to by a rude magical item.

What are the thoughts on the way that SoT presents the free archetype? I found a bit restrictive . For example , if my goal is to become a wizard halcyon speaker , why i have to choose the druid archetype on the second level ?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. The way it works, you can still take the halcyon speaker dedication at second level in place of your wizard feat. The free druid archetype is going to be in addition to your regular feat choices.

The sun gods said "Trans Rights!"

I want to thank Eleanor, Luis, and everyone else at Paizo for how supportive they were during that time. I was writing for this book while my city was on fire. There were days I didn't even want to get out of bed, let alone open a computer or check my phone just to be greeted with even more bad news.

I can't speak on behalf of any other freelancers, but I truly appreciate you for holding this all together and giving me the space I needed to make something I could be proud of.

That is fully not what colonize means.

I also remember Allie Bustion (I think it was her, at least?) talking...quite a while ago by now about all three of the Ekujae (plus the Song'o halflings, I think), so it's likely all of them get a spotlight of some sort.

Unsure about Akrivel though, haven't heard of that, but we might find out today!

Minor correction: The Ekujae are one of three groups of elves. But yes, all three will be in the book.

I don't believe there's any mention of Ninshabur, and there are only a couple of footnotes that mention the Shory. Off the top of my head, the main historical figures are Choral the Conquerer, Skyking Taargick, Old-Mage Jatembe, and Nex.

Very excited that this is a high level stand alone. It's rare for me to actually get my characters that far along before real life circumstances force a game to a close, so this will be great for me. I'm going to play this one from the player and the GM side, for sure.

I can't name any off the top of my head, but there are a few pathfinder deities who are depicted as the ancestry of whichever group happens to be worshipping them. Sivanah famously has seven different faces (although she only shows off six of them).

I can't wait to try to GM this and accidentally make a class full of obnoxious young students that my players will struggle to want to keep alive. I can envision any Malfoys suddenly getting "lost" in a hurricane...

A good teacher is responsible for taking care of ALL of their students. Even the ones they don't personally like.

I don't really think anything has been "retconned" about Goblins, at least as far as PF1 going to PF2. A lot of them still do love fire, rancid food, and would rather have a pet rat than pet dog. The iconic goblin is even a bombardier. But now that it's frowned upon to kill goblins on sight, more and more of them get to branch out and and explore. They get to meet people and have experiences that they couldn't before.

I think it's perfectly reasonable, and necessary if we're going to pull away from viewing intelligent races as "monster by default."

If you're in it for the setting lore, I would recommend checking out Lost Omens: Legends. It is primarily a character book, but when many of those characters are heads of state or have the power to move literal mountains, there tends to be a lot of intersection there.

I'm so glad the announcement is finally up! It's been so hard staying quiet about this.

I would like to clarify something. Is the Mwangi Expanse completely different from North Garund? I mean, Geb, Next and Osirion are all outside of the Mwangi right? The Mwangi is actually in North Garund, IIRC.

The Mwangi Expanse is a distinct region of Garund that does not include Geb, Nex, etc. They are neighboring regions of the same continent, with very slight cultural overlap.

"Lost Omens" also refers to the Age of Lost Omens. So Lost Omens Mwangi as a phrase would not be any more incorrect than Victorian London or Renaissance Italy. It's the time and the place.

So the Magus has level 1 class feats but does not seem to gain a class feat at level 1. Is that correct?

Part of what made this book great was the transformative alchemy of all of our collaborations. We read each other's works in progress, shared ideas, forged connections.

Hmm

Alchemy, you say?

It occurs to me that at some point between drafting and proofreading my bit, I deleted the bit where I mention which entry I actually wrote! Oops.

(It was Geb)

Andrew Mullen wrote:

So for anyone interested in something altogether sillier, we've whipped up a, uh, "supplement." For the more socially-minded roleplayers :)

I am not interested, I'm sure you worked hard on it and it's well written but I don't care for detailing this area of the setting.

I do appreciate that other people do, but it's definitely not my cup of tea.

Did you click on the link? Because if you haven't I think you should at least give it a quick skim

"I want to use my knowledge of this cult to dress and act in a way that will help me blend in" seems reasonable to me, and it feels like the way to reflect that in mechanics is the allow the use of the occultism skill instead of deception.

Admittedly that could just be down to my being more liberal in the application of skills that the core rules intend, because I can also imagine a socially awkward, bookish type failing to blend in despite exhaustive knowledge of the cult.

The existence of these feats may be a sign that I need to tighten up the permissiveness of my skill adjudication when running 2E (and especially PFS).

While I tend to be a bit more lax in my home games, I generally wouldn't allow it if we were playing as 'by the book' as PFS. The reason why there's a feat tax on using skills in different ways is because without it, there's not a lot of incentive for players to diversify their skills as long as they can find some justification for using the skill they want to use.

With feats like this, you have a choice - do you want to put everything into Occultism and get a little more flexibility in how you use it, or would you rather take another ability and put more of your skill boosts into Deception?

You missed one: Sihar, Leader of the Bright Lions, and LG Human Female Fighter. A Mzali freedom fighter and possibly my favorite character in the book.

There are so many fantastic archetypes in this book that make me excited to create new characters. Don't mind me, I'm just gonna spend my weekend theory crafting 40 new PC's for games I'm not playing in.

Quite a few good guesses so far.