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I have exciting news for the fans of this Fan Film.
JJ Abrams announced Paramount is dropping their law suit against the fan film. CBS announced it will make "guidelines" for all future fan projects, whatever that means. BUT it does mean Axanar will go forward as soon as the various lawyers sign what they need to sign.

Is anyone else playing this? It reminds me of Myst or choose your own adventure books. Cool game.

This looks awesome!

New Terminator

I first heard this crazy stuff when I went to college. Now he is back with new stuff.

Here he is!

I was looking at the D&D next basic rules and noticed the following things about stat generation: elite array (15,14,13,12,10,8) has been added as a standard for new characters right along side rolling 4d6drop, and the optional point buy system is now far more balanced.

And by balanced I mean you get 27 points with all stats starting at 8 like the old D&D PB, but 14 and 15 cost 2 points each AND you can't buy a stat higher than 15 before racials. That last bit is very new to me. And I am curious how people might react about it. The more I think about it the more I like it... It may do more to equalize SAD vs MAD than anything I have seen done before.

IS this the future of Point Buy? Is that good?

I felt like posting up my efforts so far in SWtoR.

I just spent an entire evening doing the [+10 to all stats] datacron run... Damn... Nice end prize but what a pain getting there.

They place the first key deep in a 50+ level area where since half the group was below 50 meant long hours trying to herd the lowbees out to get the key. And while most of this was likely caused by our own disorganized approach it was still annoying watching them die over and over again.

The second key was easy to get from the museum itself. Then we herded our cats (I mean players) into the catwalks and switches part were all chaos reigned. What is probably a very easy trial of flipping switches in order was complicated by the fact the you NEED 7 or 8 people at switches to do this at all and at least one of them MUST be a Jedi Sage and as many of you as possible should have the mggs gun. All this being done across a bottomless pit filled with narrow catwalks and scaffolding; one mistake by one person and you ALL have to start over.

By the end I think we all wanted the programmer (clearly a diabolical Sith lord) to suffer horribly.

Ok I am curious about what you guys think about a situation that came up while I played in someone else's game.

We were adventuring in a home brew world inspired by warhammer fantasy RP's setting. It used a mix of 3.5e and Pathfinder as well as a few other d20 supplements. I was playing Freya (prideful Dwarf fighter/barbarian), my friend was playing Luna (flirty elf ranger(archery style)), munchkin was playing Krell (unscrupulous ratman thief/ninja or assassin build), hound was playing Peter (enigmatic human priest), and mr perfect was GMing.

We had been hired to clear the undead out of an old graveyard by the locals and had been rather successful in removing this stain of evil from the reclaimed cemetery. So successful that a visiting lord from the Empire asked us to be his guests at a dinner in our honor. We were all given noble finery to wear and allowed plenty of time to clean ourselves up for this important and handsome figure. After all the regal ceremony starting the evening... the lord was taking credit publicly for our actions (his money did hire us, so it was sort of accurate). Then we entered the mayors house to begin our private meal and entertainment. The lord was absolutely charming and made passes at both Freya and Luna. Luna went all flirty over him and Freya decided she wasn't going to get brushed aside so easily despite not truly being interested in starting something with a human regardless of how charming he was. Her pride was on the line so she pursued the lord with plenty of dwarven class and even managed to out dance Luna during the ball. Personally I wonder what was really going on and if this was just a distraction for our characters devised by a clever GM so we wouldn't be too interested in all the back room deals Krell and Peter were making. Either way, though I fought a good fight for the lord's attention, Luna won and she went off to be alone with him after the party. That morning the three of us got geared up for our next mission and wondered where Luna was. We left word at the inn we would wait for her at the town gates. Plenty of jokes flew about just what sort of shameless behavior Luna and Lord Charming had been engaged in over the night. When Luna did appear she was enraged and demanded we all head back and assassinate Lord Charming. I tried to calm her down and find out what Lord not-so-Charming-after-all had done but she wouldn't talk about it. She was however adamant that we kill the beast. I balked... I wanted a reason to go killing, Freya was good after all. I needed to know I was doing the right thing. She exploded with anger and attacked me instead. Well after the initial wound she gave me during the totally-surprised-that-a-friend-would-attack-me round the battle quickly turned my way and I accidentally killed her after two critical hits with an axe back to back. Krell and Peter just watched us and Krell called out "cat fight" while Peter laughed. Now we apologized to each other and the game will continue after she makes a new character... probably a snobby elf wizard of some sort if she doesn't change her mind.

But she wasn't just angry in character and while she is putting it all behind her she still won't talk about what happened. The GM is also silent on the matter. And I am wondering who was at fault here? The likely candidate seems to be the GM... BUT her anger was directed at the three of us NOT the GM. The only things I can see that may have upset her were competing with her for whatever subplot story element the not-so-Charming-after-all Lord was building or refusing to just murder someone without knowing why. Was she wrong? It did feel like betrayal when she attacked me. Was I wrong? Was this somehow Krell or Peter's fault secretly and she just attacked me for not seeing it? Did she overhear some of the off color jokes while she was in the secret room playing out this subplot one on one with the GM?

Maybe the internet can shed some new way of looking at this I am not seeing.

Aranna's Rule of Five: You should limit your helpful rules to just five. This prevents your message from getting watered down and lets your audience really get a good solid picture of what your rules mean.

Lets look at my Rules of Good Game Mastery. They are listed in order from most important to least. And each level gives you new skills as a game master helpful in running great games.

Aranna's Rules of Good Game Mastery:

1- Learn the Rules: At the heart of every game is the game master. And the most fundamental skill is rules knowledge. You can't run a great game without first learning to arbitrate rulings. So the game master should frequently study the rules of the game. The broader your knowledge the fairer your rulings become. I rank this skill as number one because it is the trust builder. It is easy for your players to trust you if they know you will rule fairly. (Build Trust)

2- Learn your Players: A game is funner if you have players. And by studying what each of your players want out of the game you can learn to alter adventures to cater to that special love each of them is searching for. NOTHING draws a player into your game stronger than content tailored to his or her own personal tastes. (Draw them into the game)

3- Learn the Story: Beyond catering to individual tastes is the story itself. The story and it's events both planned and spontaneous are what people will be talking about years from now. Learning how to incorporate good story telling techniques into your play along with the study of the storyline as presented in the adventure you are running will bring that tale to life in a way that is pure magic for game master and player alike. (Make great memories)

While the first three are the most critical the last two will elevate you past stumbling blocks many GMs struggle with.

4- Learn Balance: Beyond the rules themselves there are the challenges the players face during the story that make that moment either a brief footnote or an epic struggle. Learning how to adjust encounters to create just the right level of challenge you want to paint at that particular moment is a skill all its own. It isn't an easy skill to master, too much and you kill the party, too little and the players are bored. Practice makes perfect in this lesson. Try slight alterations to encounters first to test the impact each will make and as your skill at finding just the right adjustment improves you can safely make bigger and bigger alterations. Mastery of this skill allows you to adjust encounters on the fly or as part of a story to get that perfect fight you need at just that point in time it's needed. Whether a player can't make it or the players had some bad luck in an earlier encounter you can confidently keep the game moving forward. From the little fight that depletes resources to the epic final fight and everything combat, skill, or social in between this skill keeps the story moving and removes hurdles. (Make the challenges support the story)

5- Learn Creativity: Armed with the first four skills you are now ready to tell YOUR story. From making an adventure from scratch to crafting an entire campaign setting they all rely on creativity. Look at setting as a good example. Some settings have a strong flavor and an involving storyline while others lack in one or both of those and become uninteresting backdrops. This isn't something that can be taught easily, however if you are reading this then you are a gamer and probably fairly creative already. The best things I can offer as advice here is to familiarize yourself with what works in creative works by others. We all want to tell a tale. Writing classes and being well read both help you focus your creativity and make a compelling tale. (Share YOUR vision)

Have you ever had weird geeky moments where you say or think things in game terms?

I was at a court hearing where my boyfriend was trying to get out of a traffic ticket. And I found myself making a RAW versus RAI argument about the traffic law. You know stop signs by RAI are intended merely to prevent collisions in the intersection. Since he didn't come to a complete stop he was violating RAW. BUT since there were clearly no other cars in the intersection then he wasn't violating RAI because no collision was possible... Yeah, the judge looked at me like I was a freak too. But it got me wondering if other people had similar experiences.

Yeah. Kingdom Building rules are not good this time around. I'd say play around with some rule modifications until you figure out something that makes your players want to do it.

No personal benefit worth having. Too much rolling for things that should be a no brainer like claiming a hex.

I heard the rules were written just by James and he didn't get a chance to playtest them much. I've modified them accordingly and run the kingdom in the background.

I cannot recall what was different last time. I remember there was more of a benefit for kingdom building in the game than this time around. Players are driven by personal benefit. If it's not there, they'd rather have kingdom in the background.

Depends on the playgroup. My players are driven by the fact that the kingdom is theirs. They take it personal when something bad happens because they are responsible for the safety and wellbeing of the citizens.

We found in play that the changes that really mattered for our game were
1. Increased XP for RP (on a sliding scale)
2. Increase XP for claiming a hex.
3. Event XP based on event level like it's an encounter.
4. Rogue like skill progression (every level)
5. Add Kingdom level to untrained skills.

This gives us an average kingdom progression of a level each season if the players really push and don't suffer any setbacks, which is a good pace for us.

My players and enjoy the hexploration options in different games but the Kingmaker ones are kinda clunky. Since we do play a lot of Forbidden Lands, which has excellent rules for such things I'm looking at using their Quarter Day framework to make managing the hexploration/camping rules a bit easier/funner/less time consuming.

Note that this does come with the caveat that during a Quarter Day a character is doing one thing. Obviously by most Exploration Activities etc. don't take that long but the goal is to get away from needing to keep meticulous notes of Player A spend 2 hours setting up the camp so Player B can treat wounds on 8 different characters etc. etc. Abstracting it out, at least on this first pass.

Forbidden Lands style camping/travel

The next step will be to change how meals work to make them more worth engaging in. My initial thought is that a success has the bonus last for one Quarter Day and a Critical Success lasts for two Quarter Days but I'm not married to that and I'd have to re-look at what the bonuses are.

Chris_Fougere wrote:

Cordell Kintner wrote:

It's not an innate spell, it says "You can activate your wayfinder to cast that cantrip at will"

This would use the Activate an Item rules, and since it doesn't specify what actions are needed to Activate it, you should default to Cast a Spell. This means you can't activate it without the Spellcasting Class feature. The closest analogy to this would be a Spellheart.

That whole archetype is written poorly though, so if you're in a home game it's best to work with your GM on changes for the archetype to not be bad.

Alternately "Certain spells are natural to your character, typically coming from your ancestry OR A MAGIC ITEM" which to me indicates it would follow the rules for innate magic item.

It's easy enough to HR that the activation takes however many actions the cantrip would normally take.

Certain items grant innate spells, such as the Pendant of the Occult giving you Guidance as an innate cantrip. If this gave you an innate spell it would say it was innate, but it doesn't.

Is that the intent? Probably. But as written it requires you to Activate the Item.

Since I'm the GM and don't need to convince anyone I think I'm just going to rule that it's figured as an Innate spell with an activation action cost equal to the normal cantrip casting time. Doing so doesn't seem like it'll break anything so I'm good.

Thanks for the advice folks!

I honestly do feel that there are some balancing issues here in play, it's just tough trying to figure out how to make them work so that the players can be challenged without having to swap to milestone leveling, which ends up making random encounters effectively pointless.

Tweaking encounters for any particular party composition is <always> going to be part of the GM's job. Pre-written adventures generally play to an average party and average group of players. Fine tuning them is, broadly speaking, mandatory. My party has cake walked through moderate encounters, did okay with a severe one and then got tuned up by a low encounter that happened at night when folks didn't have armor and needed to use actions to grab their weapons etc.

Dice rolls are also a huge factor. There's a big difference in an encounter when our giant instinct barbarian rolls well (especially with Magic Weapon cast on him) and when his high roll is a 7 all session.

It's well worth analyzing why the encounters aren't challenging so that you can look at where things need to be tweaked.

We're still a little ways off from getting to the Kingdom part of things in our game but I like to be prepared.

One of the things I was looking at was doing multiple kingdom turns in the initial setup to show some time passing as the kingdom gets established. I want the players to make choices so I'm going to play through the turns rather than just time skip and give them a starting position.

I do plan to use another suggestion about leveling the Kingdom with the PCs rather than having a whole separate other XP grind so by the time the first Kingdom phase (representing several turns) is over the Kingdom will be of a level equal to the party and grow from there.

My question is, has anyone else done this? If so how many turns of building did you find worked well?

Chris_Fougere wrote:

I think they are more concerned about actual cash.

A curious question for that player from me would be..

If you had an infinite supply of money but could not buy anything higher level than your level, would you feel just as constrained?

I've basically given the group two choices.

1. RAW with wealth capped by the Wealth By Level table
2. The opportunity to make more cash but the availability of what can be bought will be capped.

With the understanding that windfall amounts of coin and items of higher tiers being available based solely on the settlement level will lead to significant game balance issues so there will be a cap in place on one or the other and it's up to them to decide as a group which they'd rather have.

Having just done this my biggest piece of advice is to not approach it with the idea of "it's like 5e" If you do then the players will get tripped up on things that aren't the same (like Dex not adding to damage for finesse weapons, for example).

Treat it like it's its own thing. Use the beginner box and the pregens so folks get a feel for things. There's a ton of value in that.

No you are completely wrong. A discount is in no way the same as earning money. A discount is a reduction in a COST, earning money is increasing the amount of gold you have. If you buy a humble bundle did you get a discount or did you make a profit? Furthermore, reductions of cost is baked into the system. After 4 days of crafting an item you can work additional days to reduce the cost. So you get the item at a reduced cost. The only thing I am saying is that the first 4 days should not be given for free. They should be compensated with a discount at the same rate that day 5+ is compensated. You are confused about the rules of crafting and should go read them again. Earning income and crafting are two different things and getting a discount on goods you produce for yourself is part of the core rules. Again the only difference between the core rules and what I am proposing is the 1st 4 days of...

Nothing stopping you from doing so in your games. Folks have pointed out a number of different reasons why things are the way they are in the RAW. Just do away with the four day wait period and you're good to go. It's your game (presumably you're the GM and not the player) so do what works for you.

Unless you're not the GM and are a player who's trying to get random internet folks to agree with you so you can try to "Gotcha" on your GM...

Maybe it's because I'm new to PF2 but it seems that the big benefit of crafting is to get items that you can't otherwise acquire due to location, location level or other thing. It's very, very clear that crafting to not meant to be a business but an option to acquire things you otherwise can't.

Grankless wrote:

If you entered your module activation code and it did not activate, contact Foundry support.

I contacted support and they got me fixed up.

The module is loaded. And the "scenes" tab doesn't have any scenes in it.

My main point is, everyone says Foundry is better without question. And I can't figure out how to use it to save my life. It's very complicated.
I wish I could, because it is much cheaper. And Release 19 for FGU was supposed to be out in Feb of 2022. But at least I can run FGU in my sleep. It's pretty simple.

Generally speaking you need to install the module, then activate the module. With some games (I can't speak to the Pathfinder premium modules) there will be a journal entry or compendium entry with an "Import" option which sets up the scenes, actors, items, journal entries etc.

Foundry does have a learning curve, absolutely. It's also a great VTT and the Pathfinder implementation is stellar and worth the effort.

We've found in our games that one of the best options is to simply communicate between the player(s) and the GM. If a character dies or is otherwise removed from play then have a conversation with the player about what they'd like to do. Some people feel their story isn't done yet and want to continue in which case it's my job as the GM to facilitate that. Sometimes the player feels like they've either told the story or they want to try something new in which case it's a matter of that player and the GM (and possibly the other players) to work out how the new PC fits into things.

Everyone is there to have fun and one of the best ways to continue to so when issues like character death happens is to talk to each other like adults. Games run smoother when people communicate.

In a recent 5e game I had a character (Paladin/Rogue) who died and I was debating making a cleric since we needed one and I don't mind. But I also realized I had more to do with the character. So I talked to the DM about having her meet her Goddess (the Morrigan) and allowed her to return to life but as her cleric, not her paladin. Same character, mostly same stats (DM let me switch around Charisma and Wisdom) but new outlook on life and new RP potential and new stories.

So find what works for your group but absolutely the most important piece of advice is to talk to the GM and the group together.

Do you guys’ limit when player’s attempt to redo another players failed check?

It depends on the circumstance, does it make sense for someone else to be able to do the thing if the first character failed? If someone fails a Recall Knowledge then someone else might remember. If someone fails a Deception check, more people talking it probably not going to make things easier. Trying to pick a lock but it's beyond your skill? Sure let someone else try.

The most important things I keep in mind are a) what is the consequence of failure and b) what is the cost to someone else trying?