Mike Selinker's page

I wrote a thing about the day my friends and I released D&D 3E. Thought folks here might like it.

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Happy 25th birthday, D&D 3E

It’s August 10, 2000. I’m walking toward the seminar room at Gen Con, flanked by the best designers of Dungeons & Dragons ever. I hold a sheaf of 100 photocopied chapters in my hands. In each of these 12-page documents, Monte Cook has written one of the finest pieces of writing in D&D’s history, Chapter 1 of the new Dungeon Master’s Guide. It tells prospective DMs how to craft campaigns that sing, just like Monte’s. I expect the 50 people attending my two-hour seminar will like them. I made a few extra just in case people want one for their friends at home.

This seminar is the preview of the DMG, which comes out next month. I’m the least senior of the four creative directors on the 3rd Edition relaunch, helping to mold the work of the best game design team I’ve ever seen. Mostly I’m getting out of their way. They know what they’re doing. But hey, I’m one of the better public speakers on the team, and I’ve been running 50-person seminars at Gen Con for a long time, so I’m leading the panel.

As I arrive at the room, the youngest member of our team comes running up, breathless. He says there are more people outside than I expected.

How many, I ask.

“About 700,” he says.

I hand him my corporate AmEx. “Three blocks over on Monument Circle there’s a Kinko’s. You have 1 hour and 55 minutes to get back here with 800 copies. I will buy you a steak dinner at Morton’s if you make it.”

He gets the steak. Eight hundred people see the possibilities in what my talented colleagues have brought to the page. And we see how many people want us to succeed with those possibilities. The Player’s Handbook sells out, the highest selling book ever released at Gen Con. Three booths have the first products created under the groundbreaking d20 License. They sell out too. Everything we do sells out.

The best thing to ever hit the game industry launches on that day, 25 years ago. I had a little part in making it happen. That makes me happy, even to this day. And I still have my Player’s Handbook embossed with my name in gold leaf. It’s never leaving my house.

D&D still had some evolution left in it. It’s now the most telegenic game on the planet, played in the world’s biggest basketball stadiums. It’s digitally savvy. It’s got *good* movies now. It has evolved and morphed in Wizards of the Coast’s hands, all for the better. But at the start of that day, we didn’t know that was possible. Then we did.

Happy 25th birthday, 3rd Edition D&D. You did good.

Mike

I normally don't talk about Lone Shark's other stuff here, as this is a PACG forum. But I figured it'd be okay to link to a post I made about Lone Shark's "Save Our Sanity" offer in light of the coronavirus affecting us here in Seattle and around the world. You might find some things you might enjoy, especially if you're in a state of home care during this pandemic.

Thanks for playing our games!

Ten years ago, we did NaNoWriMi—National Novel Writing Minute—on this forum for the first time. Wanna do it again? If so, write as much of a novel as you can in one minute, then post it here. If you do, I will give you high praise and validation!

Rules and example from ten years ago:

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Yes, you read that correctly. I wanted to do something to show solidarity with my NaNoWriMo friends, so I invented “NaNoWriMi.” You see how much of a novel you can write in a minute (hence the “Mi”), and then you abandon it forever. 1, 2, 3, go…

My "Novel Zero" was this:

Last Moon at Aggathor
by Mike Selinker
Today I am a man, thought Redclaw. I can give up enough of myself to make the change, day or night. The greater acommplishemnt is retaining enough of myself to change back.

Yes, that's how I spelled "accomplishment." You think I'm wasting precious seconds on spellchecking? I've concluded that the rule "You can finish your last sentence, but for God's sakes, be quick about it" may need to exist, but most people seem to get somewhere with 60 seconds from conception to (a sort of) conclusion.

Anyway, it's kinda taken off on my Facebook page ("novels" by Jason Bulmahn, Owen Stephens, Miranda Horner, and more), so I figured folks here might like in. I'll probably collect them somewhere afterward. Anybody want to climb on board the NaNoWriMi Express?

Mike

Give us your plague-free heroes! Specifically we want a snapshot of what your characters look like after they took on the last challenge in Curse of the Crimson Throne. (That is, you've completed Scenario 6D: Legacy of Blood or Scenario 7A: The Inevitable Betrayal.)

Please respond to this thread with a full feat and deck list of any characters that fit the above description (and only that description!), in very specifically the following format.

Character Name: (name)
Role Card: (role)
Skill Feats: (skill)+(X), (skill)+(X), etc.
Power Feats: +(X) hand size, (added proficiencies), (other feats)
Card Feats: (type)+(X), (type)+(X), etc.
Unspent Hero Points: (X)
Weapons: (card), (card), etc.
Spells: (card), (card), etc.
Armors: (card), (card), etc.
Items: (card), (card), etc.
Allies: (card), (card), etc.
Blessings: (card), (card), etc.

Please don't skip or add any lines; if you don't have any of something, just leave the part after the colon blank. Include loot cards under their card type, please. Also, if your character died, let us know that.

Thanks to all saviors of Korvosa!

Mike

Next week the Core Principles series covers all things conversion-related. We’re taking a list of pre-Core card changes to PaizoCon and discovering anything else we find there.

We'll be there with Core, Curse, and everything else! Come talk to us about the new PACG!

I'll be going on Reddit at 1 pm today to discuss anything people want. If you have questions, go here at 1 pm Pacific. See you there!

As a reminder, if you created something homebrew for PACG, we'd love to hear about it. Write us a blog!

Wait, we're quoting Paracelsus now?

We will be there! In person, I mean.

C'mon, that Reed Moccasin joke was stellar.

Followup to the timeshare joke:

Years later, I snagged an actual teal jacket from a travel agency that was closing and delivered the "like taking money from this pocket" speech to an audience of 1,000 puzzle people. The Travel Agent remains one of the characters I get the most callbacks to from fans to this day.

It's all about Appleslayer. Good pup!

Don't ask what happens if they find a card that has the Firearm trait and the Sword trait...

<looks up "Sword Pistol" on Google>

Post 'em here! Specifically we want a snapshot of what your mummy-busting character looks like after he or she finished Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh. (That is, you've completed the scenario The Sky Pharaoh's Sanctum.)

Please respond to this thread with a full feat and deck list of any character that fits the above description (and only that description!), in very specifically the following format.

Character Name: (name)
Role Card: (role)
Skill Feats: (skill)+(X), (skill)+(X), etc.
Power Feats: +(X) hand size, (added proficiencies), (other feats)
Card Feats: (type)+(X), (type)+(X), etc.
Weapons: (card), (card), etc.
Spells: (card), (card), etc.
Armors: (card), (card), etc.
Items: (card), (card), etc.
Allies: (card), (card), etc.
Blessings: (card), (card), etc.

Please don't skip or add any lines; if you don't have any of something, just leave the part after the colon blank. Include loot cards under their card type, please. Also, if your character died, let us know that.

Thanks to all raiders of tombs!

Mike

Whoa, hey, that announcement! Go get those cards from DriveThru!

Gaby Weidling frequently embraces the "Count every die as a 1" strategy.

Vic probably wished I said something like "None of this should imply final product names or art or even punctuation." So let's all just agree that I said that.

Post 'em here! Specifically we want a snapshot of what your demon-busting character looks like after he or she finished Shifting Sands. (That is, you've completed the scenario In Search of Chisisek and have chosen your role card.)

Please respond to this thread with a full feat and deck list of any character that fits the above description (and only that description!), in very specifically the following format.

Character Name: (name)
Role Card: (role)
Skill Feats: (skill)+(X), (skill)+(X), etc.
Power Feats: +(X) hand size, (added proficiencies), (other feats)
Card Feats: (type)+(X), (type)+(X), etc.
Weapons: (card), (card), etc.
Spells: (card), (card), etc.
Armors: (card), (card), etc.
Items: (card), (card), etc.
Allies: (card), (card), etc.
Blessings: (card), (card), etc.

Please don't skip or add any lines; if you don't have any of something, just leave the part after the colon blank. Include loot cards under their card type, please. Also, if your character died, let us know that.

Thanks to all raiders of tombs!

Mike

The Corollary under "Move to a location based on the deck's undefeated banes" is pretty darn smart, says me.

So sayeth the readers of Pocket Tactics, anyhow.

...that on June 22, 2016, a mere day after publishing a blog on permadeath, I had killed all 11 characters in Pathfinder Adventures.

The new Up to 4 Players comic.

You can get demos of Mummy's Mask by our own Liz and Gaby and friends, plus come to the 2 pm PACG seminar where we'll talk about all the cool new stuff!

Guy playing PACG: "Hey, you're Mike Selinker, right?"
Me: "Yup. How do you like the Pathfinder game?"
Guy: "I'd like it a whole lot better if Seelah hadn't just died."
Me: "Gimme your rulebook."
Guy: "Ohhhkay."
<writes "Seelah is alive.--Mike Selinker" in his rulebook>
Me: "There, it's in the rules."
Guy: "I like the game a lot better now."

Wrath of the Righteous lead designer Paul Peterson and I are doing a Reddit AMA at noon PDT today! Come ask us questions there! Or we will be sad and lonely.

We want a snapshot of what your demon-busting character looks like after he or she finished the Wrath of the Righteous Adventure Path. Ideally, it is what the character looked like after completing Closing the Worldwound but before following its reward that allowed you to mine the box for whatever boons you wanted for Justifiable Deicide. (If you can't remember that exactly, get as close as you can.)

Please respond to this thread with a full feat and deck list of any character that fits the above description (and only that description!), in very specifically the following format.

Character Name: (name)
Role Card: (role)
Skill Feats: (skill)+(X), (skill)+(X), etc.
Power Feats: +(X) hand size, (added proficiencies), (other feats)
Card Feats: (type)+(X), (type)+(X), etc.
Weapons: (card), (card), etc.
Spells: (card), (card), etc.
Armors: (card), (card), etc.
Items: (card), (card), etc.
Allies: (card), (card), etc.
Blessings: (card), (card), etc.
Mythic Path: (path)

In addition, please add which cards you redeemed:
Cards Redeemed: (card), (card), etc.

Please don't skip or add any lines; if you don't have any of something, just leave the part after the colon blank. Include loot cards under their card type, please. Also, if your character or cohort died, let us know that.

Thanks to all crusaders for closing that pesky Worldwound!

Mike

Check out #1.

That's real nice. We try very hard on this front. Something about having a mixed-gendered design team helps quite a bit.

Dang, that's a lot of posts. We hit 50,000 sometime while we were at PAX, and noted the milestone.

We've read them all. There are many great ideas here, and we consider and debate a whole lot of them. We hear about differences in opinion on difficulty, depth, replay value, character powers, and many, many rules questions. Some of that is easy to answer, and some of it is stuff we wish was easier to answer. But we try to answer as much of it as we can. We're not always concerned with answering quickly, just with answering the best way possible.

Mostly, we want to thank you guys for pushing us. We want the best game possible, and having fans who are so committed to telling us what we did right and what we did wrong (even if we don't always agree) is a major part of making our products great.

We're never going to give you everything you want. Heck, we're never going to get everything we want out of this game. But we're always listening and shaping our plans based on your feedback.

So anyway, thanks. Here's to another 50,000 posts.

Mike and the PACG team

Post 'em here! Specifically we want a snapshot of what your demon-busting character looks like after he or she finished Demon's Heresy. (That is, you've completed the scenario The Ivory Sanctum and have chosen your role card.)

Please respond to this thread with a full feat and deck list of any character that fits the above description (and only that description!), in very specifically the following format.

Character Name: (name)
Role Card: (role)
Skill Feats: (skill)+(X), (skill)+(X), etc.
Power Feats: +(X) hand size, (added proficiencies), (other feats)
Card Feats: (type)+(X), (type)+(X), etc.
Weapons: (card), (card), etc.
Spells: (card), (card), etc.
Armors: (card), (card), etc.
Items: (card), (card), etc.
Allies: (card), (card), etc.
Blessings: (card), (card), etc.
Mythic Path: (path)

Please don't skip or add any lines; if you don't have any of something, just leave the part after the colon blank. Include loot cards under their card type, please. Also, if your character or cohort died, let us know that.

Thanks to all crusaders!

Mike

According to Facebook, two years ago today I was nervously pacing the Paizo booth right as Gen Con opened wondering if anyone would buy this "adventure card game" we had cobbled together. What a weird couple of years it's been since.

Oh! I forgot to mention that I'm a guest at DexCon this weekend. If you're at the show in Morristown today, come say hi!

As I have been asked to host the 2015 ENnie Awards at Gen Con, I opened up ENWorld Ask Me Anything thread. If anyone here would like to ask questions on that forum, please do!

Mike

The Vanguard Award is the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design's award for the most innovative game of the year. This year, it gave out two awards, one for Marvel Dice Masters and one for PACG. So that's nice!

The PACG design team showed up on Reddit on Wednesday, and the results are pretty entertaining. We talked Pathfinder, Apocrypha, and many other things. Might be a fun read.

If you've finished Skull & Shackles, we'd love a snapshot of what your character looks like. (That is, you've completed the scenario Last Stand of the Hurricane King and have gained adventure and adventure path rewards.)

Please respond to this thread with a full feat and deck list of any character that fits the above description (and only that description!), in very specifically the following format.

Character Name: (name)
Role Card: (role)
Skill Feats: (skill)+(X), (skill)+(X), etc.
Power Feats: +(X) hand size, (added proficiencies), (other feats)
Card Feats: (type)+(X), (type)+(X), etc.
Weapons: (card), (card), etc.
Spells: (card), (card), etc.
Armors: (card), (card), etc.
Items: (card), (card), etc.
Allies: (card), (card), etc.
Blessings: (card), (card), etc.
Your Ship: (card)

Include loot cards under their card type, please. Also, if your character died, let us know that.

Tip o' the brim, scalawags!

Mike

Man, that is hot. Love everything about this one, Tanis.

FYI, Chelish Marine from S&S6 is eventually going to get an erratum similar to the one for Crab Swarm.

It will be something very similar to changing "Each character at your location must summon and encounter the Chelish Marine; it is defeated or undefeated based solely on your check." to "Before you act, each other character at your location summons and encounters the Chelish Marine."

We are taking a look at cards like Tangletooth, Falling Bell, Mammy Graul, Silas Vekker, Avalanche, Occluding Field, and Barroom Brawl to see if anything else might need a similar treatment. No decisions yet on those, which is why we may take a while to errata Chelish Marine.

We found a bit of stray text from an earlier draft got embedded into the final version of the loot weapon Doubleshot Pepperbox in S&S6.

For your combat check, reveal this card to use your Dexterity or Ranged skill + 1d6+2; you may additionally bury this card and up to 3 other cards to add 2d6 for each card you bury. If you did not bury this card, roll 1d6, or 1d12 if you are proficient with weapons; on a 1, or on a 1–4 if you buried any cards to add damage, shuffle this card into your deck.

You can't bury other cards to add damage without burying the pistol itself, so the bolded "if" statement can never be true. So we're deleting that phrase. The inevitable FAQ entry will be something like (Vic wordsmithing to follow):

The Doubleshot Pepperbox seems a lot more likely to be shuffled into my deck if I buried it. How exactly is that possible?
It isn't. If it's buried, it's buried.
Resolution: On Doubleshot Pepperbox, delete the phrase "or on a 1–4 if you buried any cards to add damage".

For folks who like awards, some news!

You might like to vote in the BoardGameGeek awards for RPGs, where Pathfinder is up for RPG of the Year, and the Advanced Class Guide is also up for Supplement of the Year. Key datum: 1 is best.

Folks might like to vote in this the board game categories. The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles is up for Card Game of the Year, as well as Solo Game of the Year.

So, if that's your thing, go vote for all those fine games!

For folks who like awards, some news!

Folks might like to vote in this BoardGameGeek award. Skull & Shackles is up for Card Game of the Year, as well as Solo Game of the Year. Key datum: 1 is best.

You might also want to vote under RPGs, where Pathfinder is up for RPG of the Year, and the Advanced Class Guide is also up for Supplement of the Year.

So, if that's your thing, go vote!

Post 'em here! Specifically we want a snapshot of what your piratical character looks like after he or she finished Tempest Rising. (That is, you've completed the scenario The Free Captains' Regatta and have chosen your role card.)

Please respond to this thread with a full feat and deck list of any character that fits the above description (and only that description!), in very specifically the following format.

Character Name: (name)
Role Card: (role)
Skill Feats: (skill)+(X), (skill)+(X), etc.
Power Feats: +(X) hand size, (added proficiencies), (other feats)
Card Feats: (type)+(X), (type)+(X), etc.
Weapons: (card), (card), etc.
Spells: (card), (card), etc.
Armors: (card), (card), etc.
Items: (card), (card), etc.
Allies: (card), (card), etc.
Blessings: (card), (card), etc.
Current Party Ship: (card)

Please don't skip any lines; if you don't have any of something, just leave the part after the colon blank. Include loot cards under their card type, please. Also, if your character died, let us know that.

Thanks to all pirates!

Mike