Miphon's page

Welcome back Scott,
I'll be following your work with interest as Legacy of Fire is definitely one of the APs I'm really keen on running for my 4E group one day.

Our group isn't progressing very fast through RotRL (it's taken just under 2 years to get to the start of HMM), so it may take us a while to get to it tho...

...or do drow make the perfect denizens for the Shadowfell?

It makes a certain amount of sense to me, and I don't think the Raven Queen's connection to the Shadowfell should make any difference as to whether or not Drow are in abundance there or not... as you say, it's a big plane :D

Now I'm just wondering how to incorporate this idea into my own campaign given that I'm using Golarion as my setting. While I've kept the 4E cosmology of the Feywild and Shadowfell, I have been using Paizo's material for the origin of the Drow, which I'm now tempted to try to tweak...

LyingBastard, Miphon and maybe Slatz: Yeah, things are pretty full, but if this goes well and there’s still interest I might start up another intro game in a few weeks.

Okay cool... have fun :D

Looks like I'm a little late, but I'd be interested in taking part in either this or the potential follow-up game you mentioned.

I played in a short game using the PF alpha rules, but my usual group plays 3.5 and I've been itching to try out the PF rules since I bought them. I have a lot of RP experience, but this would be my first PBP.

Thanks for the link, this looks to be an amazing resource...

The big difference is that some dang fool made a great adventure path with many giants, but few leveled humanoids.

A quick glance through volume 4: The Fortress of the Stone Giants - reveals... big spoiler here... Stone Giants. A dozen in the first encounter, and something in the neighborhood of 60 creatures of the giant type by the end of the mod. 90% of these creatures have a less than 50% chance of making the will save. It even introduces a new type of giant with a whopping -6 will save modifier vs. Hold Person!

Humanoids (non-giant) with class levels: 1 (She is cool, I must say!)

The Against the Giants series has been a favorite of mine for something like 20+ years. It is a dream come true to DM an updated version, and I really want it to be epic for everyone involved. What I foresee is a long series of coup de graces, with the occasional non-giant encounter to keep it from being totally boring. Why not scribe 100 scrolls of hold person, for about the cost of a +2 weapon, and hardly bother making an attack roll? Can anyone think of anything even half as efficient at blowing through all those giants?

I could fudge the rolls, bump up their will saves, give them some funky immunity, or some other rules bending, but I like to set up the game, and let the dice fall where they may. I would like to see if anyone has any by-the-rules ways of handling this before resorting to house rules.

[Disclaimer: I have no problem with the players wholesale butchering mooks. I have always had a plenty-more-where-that-came-from attitude, but it should at least present some risk, or tax resources.

I'm not quite up to running this part of the AP yet, but I would imagine that the best defence against the indiscriminate use of Hold Person would be the number of giants present in a particular encounter. Sure it's easy to "hold" then coup de grace one giant, but it's trickier to pull off when he has a few buddies with him.

So if your group is consistently using this trick, you might want to rework some of the encounters to include a few more giants to keep them challenged.

Well, Golarion dwarves and elves seem to mostly be found/mentioned in the vicinity of their homeland mountain ranges or forests (respectively), or in defined compounds within trading centers (cities, towns on trade routes). (IIRC from the Campaign Setting & the Elves of Golarion booklet) The 4E PHB description implies that while dwarves & elves have homelands, they do mix in other settlements, and are less rare/unusual than their Golarion counterparts.

Newly-promoted-to-core (but not proprietary) 4E races like eladrin, tieflings, and drow are pretty rare on Golarion-as-written, and are generally considered untrustworthy/mysterious/evil if known of at all. I don't think dragonborn exist at all on Golarion (never read mention of them). I've tried to avoid dragonborn entirely at my table, even when I've found a home for genasi and warforged (arcane-created imperial soldier-races from Kelesh & Tian Xia respectively, but unusual outside of those regions & Absalom).

Adventurers/PCs are always more cosmopolitan than the average rube, so maybe your players take everybody in stride, but even so, I think there's definitely a different human to non-human ratio assumed on Golarion than in the various 4E settings/descriptions.

With respect to the "standard" non-human races (dwarves, elves, gnomes), I concede that there are issues with the rarity of these races outside of their "traditional" areas, but it seems to me that this isn't necessarily exclusive to 4E as any 3.x/PF player of one of these races would also face similar issues. Perhaps 4E magnifies this due to the (anecdotally) higher prevelance of non-human PCs over previous editions. I think the explanation that adventurers/PCs are more cosmopolitan/diverse than the average population helps smooth over a lot potential issues in the area however.

I agree that the other 4e PHB races (eladrin, tieflings, and dragonborn) can be a bit harder to fit into Golarian, and dragonborn especially may require a lot more work than either of the other two races. Once you start adding in the additional races from PHB2, FR, Eberron, and other WotC sources I can easily imagine a poor DM getting overwhelmed trying to find a place for all of them in their version of Golarion. The approach I have taken with my campaign is to automatically allow races from the 4E PHB (we started before PHB2 was released) and races that were present in the 3.5 PHB (gnomes, half-orcs) as soon as mechanics for them were available. Any other race is subject to DM-approval, and my players understand that this is not for mechanical/balance reasons, but a matter of whether they can be made to fit within the game's setting.

So far this approach has worked for me as, after initially working out how eladrin, tieflings, and dragonborn fit within Golarion, I only need to do any work when a player asks for a race outside of this list. So far, I've only had the one request (for a drow PC), and in that case the player came up with a compelling back story that was laden with potential story hooks, so I was more than happy to approve it.

I agree, you can pretty much shape the cosmology to suit your purposes. However, depending on your game, the First World and the Cataclysm kind of key directly into the backgrounds/mysteries all of the elf-derived races (elves, eladrin, drow - I have a pretty nifty 4E/Golarion hybrid explanation for them, if you're interested) as well as gnomes, dwarves, and various gods/cosmic horrors.

I would definitely be interested in seeing what you have come up with. I'm still trying to nail down the cosmology in my game although it may be a while before it becomes directly relevant to my players.

These are the main problems/issues I've encountered. 4E & Golarion differ in their attitudes toward the "monstrous" races, and also in the rarity of non-humans outside of race-specific homelands. So you've got to decide where on the spectrum your version of the setting would fall (this can vary depending on where in the world you set it, of course).

Would you care to elaborate on this? I'm running a 4E Golarion game and it seems to me that the differences are fairly minimal, but maybe I'm not seeing what you're seeing.

As for cosmology, I've found no problem equating the First World with the Feywild, and the Shadowfell with Golarion's version of the Underdark (detailed a lot in the Second Darkness AP). YMMV of course, and there's nothing saying you couldn't just keep the flavor/origins and ignore the labels.

Nothing about 4E requires you to stick with the standard 4E cosmology (with the possible exception of the Feywild/Eladrin connection), so you can easily use the default Golarion cosmology IMO. In my game, I'm looking at some kind of hybrid between the two because I like the Feywild/Shadowfell parts of 4E's cosmology, but YMMV.

trellian wrote:

On topic:

I also find that the new format is a completely turn-off for me. Room descriptions in one half, enounter descriptions in another? I was appalled when it showed up in late 3,5, and as annoyed when it made the transition to 4th ed. And come on, reproducing the same goblin stats for every encounter? It sure is a nice way to earn money (aka. rip off the customer), but that space could have been used for something else.

OK, that came out worse than it was intended to.. to clarify, I like 4th edition, I just don't like the way WOTC handles the source material and the adventures.

I find the new format to be a godsend. The room/encounter format (known as the delve format) is created that way so that the DM can run an entire room without having to flip through multiple pages. Monster stat blocks appear multiple times for the same reason. I'll gladly pay an extra couple of dollars if the final product makes my game run more smoothly, and for me (and a great deal of other DMs, judging by the continued use of the delve format) the current adventure format does just that.

I can see how the delve format is useful when you are running the game, but personally I don't find it useful for determining whether the adventure is one I want to run or not. YMMV of course, but I suspect that the delve format is one of the reasons a lot of people don't rate published WotC adventures very highly. No concrete evidence to back up this opinion, but from various forum comments I get the impression that they rate better from those that have actually played them than from those who have just read them.

They made the horse squeeze through those narrow brambles. More to the point, the horse was unconscious and the goblins dragged it through the brambles and across the bridge and locked it up, and when it woke up the goblins realized that they probably shouldn't have had gone through all that trouble.

It wasn't easy for the goblins to pull this off, of course, and I suspect quite a few of them died on the perilous bridge crossing.

When I was a player in a RotRL game, this is roughly how my GM described it when we asked him about it... in some ways his description of how goblins operated reminded me of how ants move objects much larger than themselves. Crazy, murderous ants....

I'm somewhat disappointed that the players in my game never asked me this question tho...

I hate the new website layout. And the fact that 3E products have been removed from the product catalogue.

Are the older edition downloads and 3E free adventures gone as well?

It was buried down the bottom of the General Archives page, but there is a link to the 3rd Edition Archive on their website. I hope this helps.

Back on topic, I'd prefer for there to be more fluff than crunch in these Race books, but I guess it may depend on the intended audience. If these are primarily intended for players, then crunch will probably predominate as the fluff probably won't fit most campaigns.

The attempt at humour aside, my first reaction when reading this thread was one of disappointment. I foolishly clicked the link expecting discussion of various aspects of 4E that people liked or incorporated into their game, instead I found the warmed-up leftovers from the edition wars...

Oh well, on a positive note, one thing 4E gave me was a new gaming group thereby allowing me to run one of Paizo's excellent APs... :)

The revised feat will be in the next published update, but in case you want to use it immediately, here's what I just pounded out:

Let me know what you think.

Thanks for the fast response. The new feat looks interesting, so I'll let my player take it if he wishes and I'll see how it works in game.

I've posted new versions of the first two adventures' conversion PDFs, as well as a new document that will collect player elements from the various converted sources.

You can find them all linked on the blog.

Tales from the Rusty Dragon

Thanks for all your hard work with this conversion Scott, as a first time 4E DM I've really appreciated having this material available while running my group through this AP.

I do have a question I hope you can offer some insights into. I have a new player joining our group who, after reading the Player's Guide, wants to play a Varisian Sorceror with a Varisian Tattoo. I notice however that the prerequisites for the converted feat make this only a valid option for wizards. I was thinking of modifying it so that it was available (and useful) for sorcerors and possibly other arcane users, and was wondering whether you have any pointers or suggestions.

Thanks in advance.

Hey gang,

I find myself needing to know some 4e stuff.
Is there a Primer or Cliff Notes or Quickstart version out there?

If not, what are the basics I should read up on? (I can borrow the core books easily. I need to know what sections to cover.)

T.I.A.

There is a free downloadable quickstart version for the 4E rules available from the WotC website here.

In addition, this page has links to the demo version of the character builder plus some free adventures.

While there isn't a definition of marked in the MM, you will find it in the list of conditions on page 277 of the PHB. Unless the specific hobgoblins also have abilities that can trigger off actions their marked target may take, then it simply means that the marked target takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls for any attack that doesn't target the hobgoblin that marked it. Nothing more, nothing less.

ArchLich wrote:

Stefan Hill wrote:

I'm with "lame". It's like asking Santa and makes little "in game world sense". "Oh look a +5 sword of turning things blue that I suddenly decided I needed last Tuesday. Funny I would find one of those at the bottom of this disused sock mine...". Only time I would allow "asking" is if they visited a sage to find a loctaion/myth/legend about the item and I developed a story/adventure that was specifically to find item X.

S.

Sock Mine!

Where else do you think socks come from?

Socks are the physical manifestation of extra-dimensional creatures into our world. Occasionally something disrupts the extra-dimensional projection field causing half of this physical manifestation to wink out of existence...

Back on topic, in the game I run I have asked the players to let me know if there are any particular items they are interested in obtaining, but none of them have taken me up on this offer. So up until now, I have been selecting items I think they will find useful or interesting, but it would be nice to get some suggestions from them...

Do the PCs need or expect to know that these adventure hooks are quests? In a non-linear game like you describe, I would personally work out the rewards for all the hooks, but I wouldn't necessarily let the players know that these rewards exist until they had completed the quests these hooks lead to.

If you are using some kind of handout/quest cards for the players to keep track of which quests they are on, then you could either leave the information about the rewards off the cards, or not give them the card until you judge they have committed themselves to following up on that particular hook.

So here's a question to the community:

I'm designing the encounter structure for the beginning of Fortress of the Stone Giants. That section of the adventure involves a string of encounters in very short succession (in the original adventure, they even potentially overlapped). The entire set of encounters was originally designed to last two and a half minutes total, which comes nowhere near allowing for even one short rest.

I'd like to include multiple encounters during this section, but the PCs will definitely need the ability to regain encounter powers and heal up between fights.

So I have a dilemma. Do I extend the string of encounters so that they take place over a much lengthier period (20 minutes or so)? Do I ignore the 5-minute requirement for short rests in this case and just give the PCs the benefit of a rest after each fight? Or do I choose a different option that I haven't already foreseen.

Advice?

I would ignore the 5 minute requirement for a short rest if that suits the pacing of narrative better. I did this with the goblin raid on Sandpoint during the Swallowtail Festival between the first and second encounters, describing it as the party taking a few moments to catch their breath and take stock of the situation before the next wave of goblins appeared.

You mean the earlier post about how the 4E RPGA games he played in were like a machine? :)

However, I have the same reaction to, if there is a thread titled "PRPG is Awesome," where the initial post is how they like Pathfinder RPG, and a laster poster adds that they are having much more fun than they had with 4e and it's long and boring combats along with the absence of roleplaying. Just because that, more or less, seems much like a invitation for someone with the other viewpoint to argue it.

Previously in the thread, it seemed to be more like, "4e sucks for roleplaying," and this response was more like, "No, it doesn't. It is even better for roleplaying than 3.5!"

Much like the previous example, I see this as an invitation for others to come and argue their preferred edition, making this more a back and forth between the two editions, rather than being about 4th edition. I just prefer the latter because I see less drama going that route. Keeping this about 4th edition, rather than making it about 4th edition standing on 3.5's beaten body.

I can see the point you are making, but reading Aubrey's post again it seems to me that he is in fact pointing out that 4E and roleplaying can coexist and isn't taking a swipe at any previous edition. While he did note that "the 4e DMG has the most advice on roleplaying and how to run a game than any previous version", he also indicated that it was largely a rehash of the 3.5 DMG2, so again I don't see this as indicating "4E is better", but YMMV.

As someone who plays and enjoys both editions, I too would like there to be less rhetoric around which edition people prefer, but I also think that there should be some room for people to discuss the strengths AND weaknesses of the different editions without having to worry about igniting another round of the edition wars.

I'm currently DMing a 4 player game at the moment, but I'm not sure I can offer much advice as I've rebalanced the encounters to take account of the smaller party size. From what I recall when I first looked at this issue, is that while the party may level with fewer (tougher) encounters, the treasure actually ends up being less than the recommended number of parcels per level. I have no idea how this may affect the balance of your game, but I decided that I didn't want to deal with these sorts of issues during my first time DMing 4E.

I know you said that your DM doesn't have a lot of spare time, but I would recommend that he look at rebalancing the encounters and treasure for your smaller group size. It's relatively quick and not too difficult to do, usually it's just a case of removing one creature or a few minions from an encounter (or in the case of elites/solos, reducing their level by 1 or 2) and removing treasure parcel #3 from each level's treasure "budget".

I'm anxious to try all of the adventure paths - every one of them has something new to offer, I think. Unfortunately, the desire to convert all the paths "in order" is very strong. I'm keenly aware that there is no foreseeable way for me to tackle all the adventure paths, as there are three Dungeon paths and three Pathfinder paths already published that I haven't tried out (and one more that I'm only halfway through converting), and each of those would take me about two years to run a group through. I'd have to run four concurrent campaigns in order to keep up with Paizo's release schedule (and god forbid I tried to convert all their non-path modules as well), and even then I wouldn't make any headway on already-released material. And, of course, by the time I finished even the paths already released in a decade, the next edition of the game would probably be out. It's a losing fight, to be sure.

I'll consider all my options when the time comes.

You are perhaps a victim of your own success here Scott. My only advice would be to play/convert whatever feels right for you and your group(s). The stellar work you have done with your RotRL conversion has inspired others to begin converting other Paizo APs, so you shouldn't (and I suspect you don't) feel compelled to try and do it all yourself.

IMHO, the fact that you've inspired others by showing that a conversion of this type can be done well is outstanding. There is a larger community out there who are starting to do what you as a single person cannot (i.e. keep up with Paizo's output).

In the DMG, on page 159, it has the rules for the Endurance checks needed to resist starvation, suffocation and thirst.

One sentence in particular has me puzzled as it can be read 2 ways.

"When a character fails the check, he loses one healing surge and must continue to make checks. A character without healing surges who fails a check takes damage equal to his level."

Does this mean that a character who fails a check keeps making checks until he succeeds at one, possibly taking damage more than once in a single day? Or does he fail the one check, take the damage/loss of surge, and then is safe until the next day?

I am assuming it is the former, deadlier interpretation. If it is the latter, this potentially means that a 1st level character could fail Endurance checks for 3 weeks in the middle of the desert with no food or water before even coming close to death, which is ridiculous.

IMO, that sentence must be read in the context of the sentence in the preceding paragraph that reads "Success buys the character another day (if hungry or thirsty) or round (if unable to breathe)". So I believe that means the character must continue making checks (at the same DC) until they either succeed or they run out of healing surges and hit points due to failures.

I'd go with Outsider too...

What? It wasnt bad like crossing the streams? I wear folks around here kept saying the two dont mix....:D

Correct, just like olive oil and vinegar they don't mix, but throw in some pepper and give them a good shake and you've got some tasty salad dressing... :P

Going over the first couple of encounters, they involve a gang of human thugs. In the original adventure, each is mechanically identical - they're all fighter/rogues. This won't do.

Although the original adventure describes their gang as made up of humans, I see no real reason this can't be changed to a mixed-species gang given the nature of Kaer Maga. I'm considering throwing a handful of more "monstrous" humanoids into the encounter mix, along with human gang members. I think this will make the encounters more exciting. Fighting a pack of human thugs at paragon tier is a little underwhelming.

Good decision, or bad decision?

One idea might be to tie the thugs into something similar to the Bloodghost Syndicate from Dragon #366 (August 08). At the very least you might be able to appropriate some ideas from that article.

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the results of your efforts Scott. :D

Pax Veritas wrote:

Maybe its time for someone to create a wonderful campaign setting that itself is true open source. Then have all gamers around the world be able to develop and create for it.

Something truly open would be awesome, but would probably still have to have someone "own" it to protect it from someone else trying to claim it ... and the worst part would be policing it to keep folks from putting in names, characters, info that they don't actually own (How many of us have seen L3G0LA5 etc in their fave MMO? <G>)

An intriguing concept...

Perhaps you could forestall some of these problems by using a similar open source license model to that used by Linux distributions. That is, start off with a "base" campaign world, and allow people to publish their own variants of it as long as they allow their modifications to be used by anybody else. Such a license should also have a clause to prevent people using IP (names, characters, etc.) that they don't own.

This would give individuals (or groups of individuals) the freedom to develop areas of the world that interest them without forcing them to submit to a "central authority", but rather allow their work to be "peer reviewed" based on how widespread it is adopted by the rest of the community.

Hmmmmnnnnn...... someone help me understand why fans can't create and distribute fun stuff for free?

Perhaps the copyright laws are that strict? In which case, the entire industry has been hijacked.

Well I'm not a lawyer (nor do I play one on TV), but it seems to me that in cases like this a lot of power rests in the hands of the copyright holders. Whereas a company might turn a "blind eye" towards fan/community created works that utilise its IP, there is nothing that actually prevents them from deciding to take action against a particular instance of "infringement" if they so desire.

While our hosts here at Paizo have provided a Community Use Policy that details how the community can use its IP, thereby setting out the rules and requirements for fans who wish to create "non-infringing" works, WotC is still working on their version of such a policy, so at this stage it's unclear what they may or may not take umbrage to. I think it was mentioned upthread that the lack of such a policy was one of the reasons behind the quietitude at Candlekeep.

So while you could still attempt this project, you need to be aware that until such a time as WotC have a formal community use policy in place, they may decide to stop you from using any of their IP (this might take the form of a "cease and desist" letter rather than a lawsuit). Even with a community use policy in place, there may be a clause "you agree to present Wizards of the Coast, our products, and the Wizards of the Coast Material in a generally positive light" (paraphrasing a similar clause in Paizo's policy), so care would need to be taken to not to let any bad feelings you might have towards WotC appear the material you produce.

IMO, this project still seems to be one that is worthwhile pursuing, but it would pay to get some good advice from people doing similar things before you start.

I think enough has probably been said about ENworld at this stage. If it's not to your taste, don't go there.

Back to the original topic, as I've said previously I've never been a huge fan of the realms, but if I was to start using it as a setting for a 3.5/PFRPG campaign what advice would you have for me in terms of a good starting location and recommended reading?

Scott Betts wrote:

One suggestion I've found that I think works well is the sort of "pan the camera away for the mop-up" action you see in some movies or TV series. When the PCs are clearly going to come out on top of the fight without any serious losses, and you are certain that the remainder of the fight will drag on uselessly, give the PCs the option of "mopping up" the remaining foes. If they do so, each of them loses a healing surge to represent the attrition suffered during the mop-up, but they don't have to actually play it out (nor do they lose any other potentially useful resources, like daily powers or magic item uses).

Any suggestions on a "trigger" point for this? When do you know you have reached this point?

Cheers for the suggestion,
S.

I've only had to use this tactic once since I decided to keep it in mind as a way to speed things up. When it came up in my game, there was one untouched bad guy left but he had high AC and HP,low damage output and a lot of his special abilities were based around giving bonuses to allies, so it was pretty obvious to me that it wasn't worth letting the fight grind on.

I think it's something your DM has to judge based on the situation and status of the party's foes, but I would probably never use it while the BBEG is still standing. I usually have the BBEG try to escape once the fight has reached the stage where it's obvious that it's just a matter of time till the party wins, and this is a tactic that can be used occasionally for regular foes.

Oddly enough, my 4 player group consists of 2 defenders, 1 leader, and 1 striker and, apart from the fight previously mentioned, we haven't really experienced any grind. There was one exception early on where they were pitted against a group containing 2 controllers that were throwing out a lot of debuffs onto the PCs, but I used that as a learning experience and it helped me understand monster roles more than just reading the books ever did.

In some ways, 4E's clarification of monster roles is one of the highlights of the system for me. Having a "language" to describe a foe's strengths and weaknesses helps me to build balanced encounters for my group. While doing this can impose some limitations on the foes I can use, it doesn't stop me using a certain foe but rather makes me aware that having large numbers of that foe could cause problems.

To give an example of moderation being applied pro-actively to forestall any descent into edition wars, this thread got locked down recently.

For those who don't want to follow the link, I've spoilered the OP and the mods response below.

Given that the boards do seem to full of people who play 4E, I can see why you might avoid it if you're not interested in that edition, but there is some non-4E discussion that goes on there including the occasional Pathfinder thread (and it's nice to see Paizo staff often posting in those threads). As Scott said, the staff seem to prefer that people focus on the game they enjoy rather than "bash" the game they don't like, but I only recently started lurking there and have no idea what it was like when the edition wars were in full swing.

Call me a rust monster who's been living under a rock, but I've never spent any time on EN world. And, while I don't wish to use this thread to keep posts on other happenings.... is what you're saying true... that those in this thread who feel betreyed by the wotci may feel unwelcome, or do I misunderstand? Just curious. Thanks.

YMMV but my perception is that it's more that a large proportion of posts there are related to 4E and the admins do seem to be very pro-active in not letting threads devolve into edition wars. The mods do seem somewhat even-handed to me, and I have read a few good 3.x related posts there, but it's probably not a good place to have a negatively focused rant.

Personally, I prefer the company found on these boards :D

Hey, we have a ranger in our 4E group, and he says he can shoot two arrows, but they have to be at the same target....can you explain why you can shoot at two different targets? This could save our bacon, he's lost so many shots sending both arrows at the same guy...

OT reply spoilered...

One of the players in my game wanted to play a Drow rogue, so I asked him to come up with an interesting concept before I would allow it. I'm pasting his response in spoilers as it is quite lengthy and detailed.

Admittedly the concept didn't try to answer the big questions about his origin but that just gives me more freedom to develop character hooks around him discovering his the true nature of his heritage.

So looking at the information in Second Darkness:

You know, it was so amazing to read the stats about the PAIZO Golem yesterday... I sensed that the "heart" that it's preserving is a reference to Gary's game: Vancian magic, and the core influences from Appendix N. Like Erik often says, I find those elements to be a feature, not a flaw, and believe that there is a tradition and a history that this special game shares, that when discussed and shared (as you do with your other GM friends) becomes a precious legacy we must never lose completely. We need to hold on to the heart of the game, know where we've come from, even while it has made sense to change some things. Just as Gary straddled the story and the rules, so do I find v.3.5/Pathfinder Role-playing Game is the right modern combination for my tastes, whereas that new game being sold under the d&d IP seems more like a genetic mutant, than a descendant or an evolutionary "edition."

Pax, let me start off by saying that I'm trying to add another perspective to the points you've just made rather than dispute them. I apologise if any of the following seems overly argumentative, as that is not my intent.

Shared history and tradition are part of what makes us part of a community, but for any community to survive in the long term then it needs to have new & younger members become part of it. As much as you and I may understand the roots of the original game and it's influences, I suspect most of the works listed in the original Appendix N would mean little to today's young folk (hmm... just writing that makes me feel old). For the game to keep attracting new players as the years roll on, the "literary foundations" the game rests upon must somehow be relevant to both the existing community and to potential new members. In addition, the "creative spark" that fires imaginations and, in turn, fuels games can now also be found outside of the written word, so other media has to also be taken into consideration.

While we're talking about other media, a lot of people have bagged 4E for "trying to attract people who play WoW", but (IMO) if WotC wants to play the part of an industry leader, then it does need to take a leaf out of Blizzard's playbook and work on attracting new people to the hobby. Part of what has made WoW so successful is that Blizzard made WoW more accessible than other MMOs that were in existence at the time and, as a consequence, increased the size the overall MMO market (and has so far maintained the increased player base). I suspect that improving the accessibility of D&D was one of the goals behind 4E's design, and to a large degree it suceeds in that aim, but I'm not in a position to judge how this has translated into sales numbers and market share.

Now that's not to say that tradition and shared history should be completely overturned in an attempt to bring new blood into the hobby under the twin banners of "relevance" and "accessibility", but sometimes it's worth re-examining why something is being done rather than just saying "it has always been this way". Of course, we as individuals will often hold differing opinions on how various components "define" the game, but for me one of the biggest defining factors has always been the DM's style. This is why I can't buy into the "it isn't D&D any longer" argument, I cut my DMing teeth with 1E and I'm currently DMing 4E the same way I did back then (but with the benefit of extra maturity and experience). You have made a number of great posts about the role of the DM in the game, and while these are usually from a 1E/Gygaxian perspective, I can often see my own DMing style reflected in them even though I am using a different edition.

In some ways, I believe the "heart of the game" beats within us all, and while we might have different preferences for which set of rules we roll our dice to, we still have a lot of shared history and tradition even if some of us disagree on some of the things that have changed. The challenge for us is to pass this legacy on to future generations of gamers while recognizing that they won't necessarily be familiar with some of the things that have long underpinned our games.

With only three supplements being released per campaign, how much does it matter anymore? This for me is the real downside to the 4e paradigm. I don't mind the rules or how it plays. What I mind is the lack of support. I like fully fleshed campaign worlds with reams of books I can use as inspiration or toss out as I see fit. I want setting specific adventures.....not plug and play. If WOTC released a proper Forgotten Realms, building subtly and rationally on the framework of the original realms, what would it serve? Are two books and an adventure enough to satisfy? How can two books and an adventure possibly defeat twenty 3.5 era books and almost a hundred 2e and 1e? Would three 4E books be able to replace this? Would owning 123 Realms books fashioned properly be any more powerful than owning 120?

I wouldn't call 2 setting books and 1 adventure released per setting* part of the "4e paradigm", it seems to be more of a business decision than anything related to the new edition. I do agree that it's not a good level of publisher support, and while I might understand a desire on the part of WotC to not saturate the market with setting specific products that will only sell to a small segment of their audience, I think their current approach is timid and overly cautious.

There may also be an element of not wanting to dilute the "everything is core" philosophy they are operating under, but to my mind, as long as the new setting specific books are "crunch-lite" and "fluff-heavy" then this shouldn't really be an issue. Paizo's product line contains numerous examples of how to do this well.

I do like the fact that there is ongoing support for the crunch that appears in the campaign settings (one of my players in my current 4E RotRL campaign plays a Swordmage), but there should also be room to provide a lot more setting specific support without them adding too much in the way of extra overhead to the system in general.

*I'm not counting setting specific articles that appear in Dungeon/Dragon and require a DDI subscription to access as I'm not sure how often these appear.

Before your post, I thought an imperial ton was 2000lbs, but I was wrong. Apparently an imperial ton (long ton) is just a bit more than the metric ton, which is in turn slightly larger than a ton (also called a short ton).

Yay! I learned something today. Thanks! :)

Glad to be of assistance :D (Although I must admit I had to quickly double check I had remembered it correctly after I posted it... lol).

Now that I have achieved something semi-productive for the day, it's time for me to get some sleep. 5am is not the best time to be trying to post coherently on the interwebs... :P

Edit: or even spell words correctly either...

Matthew Morris wrote:

Or to put it another way. What has WotC gained from taking down the PDFs?

A metric ton of ill-will.

Well at least it's not an imperial ton... :P

Edit: spelling...

Corporations (like people) are notoriously unwilling to admit mistakes.

I would go further and suggest that a corporation's unwillingness to admit mistakes will often lead them to further compound the error as time goes on...

In this specific instance, I predict that WotC will attempt to replace PDFs with a method of digital distribution that is so flawed and/or unwieldy that it will have to be eventually scrapped. Of course, the more money they spend trying to fix it, the longer it will take them to realize it will never work... :P

The lies about the reasons for the move are the unethical part. Dishonesty itself is unethical.

I guess "We don't want to sell old PDFs anymore to force everyone to buy 4E" doesn't sound as good.

And the "We were getting pirated, so we had to pull all PDFs to avoid more losses" is a lie as well - the PDF sales were the only form WotC sent older editions in, they went from selling a certain number of PDFs and hypothetical losses to piracy to no sales at all.

Pulling the 4E PDFs is one thing - they sell that IP in hardcover and DDI form - but pulling the 3E and older material is another thing.

So they pull all PDFs from the market under the "disguise" of combating piracy, thereby costing them potential sales, particularly of older out-of-print material, when their real aim is to "force everyone to buy 4E".

So why is all the old free 3E material they released on their website still available from the archives section of said website? Did they forget to remove it, or was it part of their crafty plan to make us believe the piracy "cover story"?

Miphon wrote:

Okay, so if I believe that WotC made a stupid decision and pulled all PDFs in a massive over-reaction to piracy (comparable to the RIAA suing grandmothers and six year olds, or Sony installing root kits on my PC via their music CDs), then I'm either a fool or dishonest?

Yes. If they really were that dumb they'd have corrected their mistake by now, after all the negative PR this generated. The fact that they did not means they have other reasons.

Miphon wrote:

For the record, I believe the "official" explanation is only part of the reason behind WotC pulling the PDFs, but without proof, any theories I or anyone else might have as to why this decision was made are only speculation or opinion.

What reason would and could there be for the removal of the old PDFs, other than "Let's force people to buy 4E by removing alternatives"?

We're getting slightly off-track here. My point was that it doesn't matter what reason you or I might believe is behind the removal of the old PDFs, because without proof we are both in the realm of speculation and opinion rather than the realm of fact. As such, I believe that calling someone stupid, gullible or dishonest for having an opinion different from your own isn't proper conduct for these boards.

Engage in debate and discussion all you want, but please respect the fact that other people may not share your opinion.

4e is no longer D&D and has lost the right to be called that except in a worthless, legal sense.

*trys to keep minkscooter quiet before the lawyers realise that the legal system was only invented to keep them busy and away from us normal folks*

Edit: apologies to any lawyers who might be offended by this, but for the sake of my sanity, I needed to post something a little less serious after my previous post :D

I do say that anyone who believes WotC's reasons for pulling the PDFs is gullible, so if you believe them you're gullible. If you defend them using the stated reasons you're either gullible or dishonest.

Okay, so if I believe that WotC made a stupid decision and pulled all PDFs in a massive over-reaction to piracy (comparable to the RIAA suing grandmothers and six year olds, or Sony installing root kits on my PC via their music CDs), then I'm either a fool or dishonest? Am I allowed to "defend" WotC from the "charge" of lying or spin-doctoring with a "stupidity plea"? I'm just trying to understand whether I'm allowed to hold an opinion that differs from yours without being either stupid, gullible, or dishonest.

For the record, I believe the "official" explanation is only part of the reason behind WotC pulling the PDFs, but without proof, any theories I or anyone else might have as to why this decision was made are only speculation or opinion.

Of course anyone who supports pulling 3E material from the market in order to push 4E material clearly shows how much they want 3E fans to continue having fun and how much faith in 4E's ability to stand on its own merits they actually have.

I can't say I've ever seen anyone make a statement supporting the removal of 3E material so that 4E could benefit as a result, but then again, the internet does contain a lot of people whose opinions fall outside of "mainstream" thought and they aren't afraid to broadcast them. If someone has voiced these sentiments, then you are probably correct about that person's insecurities, but I think you would have difficulty finding many 4E fans who agree with them.

A lot of people are selfish enough to be okay with unethical, immoral and illegal behaviour as long as they're not adversely affected.

Sadly true. However I don't believe that WotC has engaged in unethical, immoral or illegal behaviour, but you obviously feel differently and are basing your purchasing decisions on this belief. I commend you for that and wish more people were willing to be "ethical consumers".

The next edition they'll try to kill will be 4e, and they have a lot more weapons to use against it than they did with 3e. The GSL makes sure there will be no 4e equivalent to PFRPG. And if 5e is nothing like the game you want to play, you'll be the victim of your own callousness.

If 5E is nothing like the game I want to play, then I won't play it. I'm glad that 3.5 is getting continued support from Paizo and others (though it might take some time for me to convince my 3.5 DM to switch to PFRPG), but I also recognise that the OGL was a "unique" occurrence in the history of D&D. When I decided not to switch to 2E when it was released, I lost ongoing support for 1E but that didn't stop me from continuing to play it as our group still had it's greatest assets, our creativity and imaginations.

If a company treats me like an idiot - feeding me hare-brained lies about the reasons they pull PDFs from the market, and expecting me to believe them - that's enough for me to stop buying from them since at the very least hints strongly at what kind of mental capacity they expect in their target audience.

Perhaps bolding the bit where you imply that anyone who likes 4E has a diminished mental capacity might make it a bit clearer what I was responding to. I originally quoted the whole paragraph to avoid taking the "offending" portion out of context.

If anyone believes that WotC pulled the old PDFs for piracy reasons, then they are so gullible that I assume they'll fall for any attempt to con them, and will lose their last shirt to the next e-mail scam.

Whether or not I believe WotC pulled their old PDFs for piracy reasons isn't the issue, but insulting part of the community here (even if done subtly) just isn't cool.

If a company treats me like an idiot - feeding me hare-brained lies about the reasons they pull PDFs from the market, and expecting me to believe them - that's enough for me to stop buying from them since at the very least hints strongly at what kind of mental capacity they expect in their target audience.

Thanks for spreading the love around. Backhanded compliments are the best sort...

Those who do like this (FR) campaign setting, (unless they are fairly new to it) will undoubtedly know enough about the setting and its history, to find the wholesale changes made to it since the release of 4th edition, not to their liking. If one didn't like the FR as previously constituted in 1st to 3rd edition d&d, then the recent/4ed. changes to the FR likely wouldn't bother that person, save perhaps as a sympathetic observer.

That's probably an accurate description of myself. Personally, the changes to the Realms don't affect me, but I am sympathetic to how others have been hurt by what has been done. I suspect a lot of the other 4E players on these boards are similarly sympathetic.

The WoTC sycophants have unceasingly defended every blunder that their beloved company has made thus far in the 4th ed. experience (even though they deny their slavish loyalty in an effort to appear objective). I was hoping to be humored by them here on this thread also. The reason being that the "offense" committed against the FR setting and its fans by the WoTC designers, is (even to a FR hater like myself) inexcusable and can't be reasonably defended.

I think this is being unnecessarily abusive to some of the people who post on these boards that are pro-4E. Sure some of them can be a bit abrasive, but I wouldn't call them slavishly loyal to WotC. Perhaps the lack of posts from these supposed "WoTC sycophants" is an indication that they are more reasonable than you seem willing to admit. I like 4E, but that doesn't stop me admitting that I think WotC have made some serious blunders lately.

Peace.

Two things about 4e and the realms:

A lot of people who like 4e HATED D&D before the new edition (I'm getting this from message board posts and what not, so it isn't scientific or anything).

The people who designed the 4e Realms, for the most part, HATED the Forgotten Realms (this comes from reading WotC designer blogs, Wizard's web page and what not, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say this isn't an opinion). A lot people who like the 4e Realms HATED the old Realms (this, again, comes from reading various forums, so, you know, grain of salt and all).

So, Kevin, what we have here is a campaign setting updated by people who hated what came before for people who hated what came before. If I had to guess, mostly younger people (on both sides of the equation) who felt like outsiders since they weren't there to watch the Realms grow organically from the beginning.

While I might not agree with all your suppositions (I DM a 4E group and play in a 3.5 group and like both editions... and I'm by no means a younger player as I've been playing since the 1E days), I do think you touched on one of the things the 4E Realms designers were probably trying to achieve. That is, trying to bring new players to the Realms that hadn't been there since the beginning to watch them grow organically.

Personally, as a long-time D&D player who never really got into the Realms, they didn't achieve this aim as far as I'm concerned, as I'm not that interested in the 4E Realms either, but that could just be me.

I have a theory about why the Realms were first to get the edition change treatment. IMO, WotC needed to get a campaign setting released as soon as possible after the release of the new edition, and as the first setting release for the new edition it would have to sell well (by whatever definition WotC/Hasbro use to measure the success/failure of a release). In this context, FR was probably considered a "safe" option for a first release as it was a known quantity with a fairly solid fanbase.

Unfortunately, it is probably the one setting that needed the most work to make "4E compatible" and a lot of the things that people like about the Realms are different from the "core" implied setting used to define 4E's mechanics (PC power level relative to the world around them, level of deity involvement in day-to-day affairs, etc). Where I think the designers erred is not in taking a 100 year jump in the timeline, but rather in trying to make the Realms fit the "core assumptions" of the 4E world (refer to pg 150 of the 4E DMG for a list of these). I think they should have instead looked at how to make the mechanics support a 4E realms that used a different set of assumptions from those used in the "default" game.

Admittedly, I have no idea how much extra work this might have required or what time constraints the designers were working under when producing the 4E Realms. I just think that this was a missed opportunity to demonstrate how 4E's mechanics can show some flexibility when handling different settings.

I'm hoping Wil Wheaton is taking part in the new podcast and that they also manage to get another "celebrity" guest as well (even if it isn't Vin Diesel...)

From what I understand, most of the playtesting was internal, with some freelancers playesting with NDA's to keep them quiet. Regardless, of how they did it, they should have done a better job, because the amount of errata is staggering. I don't think it's be worth buying a PHB unless it is from a later print run with all of the errata updates in it. Of course, I doubt that WotC will fork out the cash to do that.

Yes there is a fair chunk of it, but it seems to me that most of the errata for the PHB is either clarifying things where the original wording could lead to potential exploits, or fixing things that should have been picked up in editing. Admittedly, I've only scanned through the PHB errata on the occasions I've referenced it to answer questions that have come up in the game I'm running, but I've yet to see anything in there that makes me think the playtesting could have been better.

IMO, there is a stronger case that issues with the writing and editing processes are responsible for most of the errata, but either way, my 4E group has no issues with using the PHB sans errata during our sessions.

One of my players did buy the (more expensive) deluxe edition which had at least some of the errata updates in it, so hopefully it wouldn't take too much extra effort or expense for WotC to include those same updates in future printings of the PHB.