Paul Wilson's page

Thanks Brian,

It does help. It turns out that the Doubletree is part of a national "lost and found" service called Charge Back. DT security told me at the con that I should enter a report though them. Last night at 2:30am, I received a text letting me know that they found my hat. Woot! I was given the option of having them hold it for me to drive down to pick it up (a 2 hour round trip for me), or to pay $24 to have it shipped to me. I went with the $24 and have already received notice that it's been shipped out. Hopefully it will be my hat in the box. LOL

So, as far as I can tell, this seems to be a secret this year. According to the event catalog, the event lottery signup for 4-day pass holders for this year has been live since 12:00 PST today. I've already put in some requests and it has registered them as entered.

PaizoCon Events 2019

I don't know about anyone else, but I never received an email about this and the deadline to enter is 11:00AM PST on Thursday, May 2, so if you didn't know, you might want to jump on this...

The Player's Guide is available for DL now.

It's been mentioned numerous times, but I also really don't like that the side bar is gone. Not having it has hugely slowed down the general usability of the site. We used to be able to see all the most recent posts and store and Paizo blogs entries at a glance. Now we have to hit at least a couple links to get to each of those areas which means even a general visit to the site now takes quite a bit longer. I used to "ping" the site 10-15 times a day, just to see if anything interesting was up, now I'll likely drop down to once or twice because it's now a significant time investment to "drop by".

The revised site does look cool, but there's no good reason to not have it also include a very cool new version of the side bar too...nudge, nudge, wink, wink....please?

"Bring out your dead!"

"I'm not dead yet....I...I feel like dancing!"

Playhouses
Opera Halls
Printers
Newspaper offices and printers
Limner - painter. especially of portraits and miniatures
Corpse collector
Anatomist
Chemist
Florist

Don't forget all manner of bureaucratic offices for any number of odd departments

Also:

Accountants
Bookbinders
Charcoalers
Coach makers
Coachmen/Hansom drivers
Engineering firms
Foremen and factory workers
Fortunetellers
Lamp lighters
Launderers
Lawyers/Barristers/Judges/Courts in general
Matchmaker (both the kinds who make sticks to light real fires and the ones who matches to encourage emotional fires...)
Messengers
Millers and mill workers
Muleskinners
Paper makers
Perfumers
Physicians (the competent ones too)
Rat catchers
Scribes
Soap makers
Street sweepers
Upholsterers
Velocipede/Bicycle maker

The trouble with the alignment system being so black and white is that it really suggests that all villains are necessarily evil, but remember that in the "real" world things are rarely that simple. The old idea that the victors write history makes villains out of losers, no matter what their alignment is.

How about this as a 180 degree different idea from those above? What if there were a Lawful Good being and thought they had discovered a way to completely destroy evil in the world, wouldn't it be worth doing anything to make that happen? In this senario, your paladin no longer needs to be fallen and now you have all the good aligned outsiders and other creature that might align with them as potential opponents/enemies of your PC's. Maybe your dragonkin has a base of gold or silver?

There would be huge roll play options here. What if the paladin is right? Will the ends actually justify the means? How big a sacrifice will your players be okay with? What if your secondary "villain" starts as your PC's patron or ally? How long does it take them to discover the ends that their patron will go to for the greater "good"? How would they deal with things if they find evidence that the paladin is "definitely wrong"? How might they deal with the doubt that their knowledge is more reliable than the paladin's?

If the paladin's plan really will destroy all evil, or evil thinks he's right, you will have evil beings that discover the plan trying to stop them. This could lead to some interesting situations in which good aligned PC's ally with, or are aided by evil beings to stop the paladin.

Okay, I'm starting to ramble a bit, but I think I've made my point. How far from the stereotype of "villain" would you be interested in going? Then again, there's nothing wrong with obvious white and black hats and it really being that "simple".

It really depends on how much you care about the suspension-of-disbelief challenge. Any time you convert a situation into the numbers of game mechanics, you've just turned your game into an exercise of rolling dice and adding numbers. Obviously rolling dice and adding numbers are what we're doing, but the more you can distract players from that fact, the easier it is for them to be "in the story" and not "at the table".

Every opponent entry shows a breakdown of what its AC is. I try to use that and how much they missed a hit by to describe why their blow was ineffective:

"Your axe bounces off the lizard's tough hide"
"The creature deftly ducks under your swing"
"Your arrow seems to shy away from the robed figure just before it would have impacted."

Observant players can use clues like these tactically by trying power attack, bluff, or dispel magic respectively to improve their chances to hit.

Telling a player that all of these opponents have an AC of 20 is boring.

Years ago, I played a 2nd Edition dwarf fighter/thief named Bunko that had a wisdom of 5 and I had a similar challenge of figuring out how to play him. In his case, it was compounded by being the only time I've every played a chaotic neutral character. At the beginning, I handled the situation by rolling a d20 every time I had what I personally considered a "good" idea. If I rolled under 5, the character would take that action. Conversely, every time I came up with what I considered to be a "bad" idea, I rolled a d20 and if I rolled under 5, the character would NOT take the action - roll above 5 and away he'd go and I'd hope for the best. After 3-4 game sessions, I started to build a picture of the "dumb" things were typical gaffs on the character's part and what things he tended to have actual "uncommon" sense about. Doing this ended up with all kinds of laughable situations including arguing with a sentient magic sword that set him on fire and challenging a pit fiend to a thumb wrestling contest...In the long run, he became one of the most memorable characters I've ever played.

BTW, he had an intelligence of 11. As he would put it, "I'm not stupid, I'm just a little dumb...".

I agree that one of the biggest reasons for starting at 1st level is it increases the likelihood of the players (and often the GM's) actually knowing what the characters can do and then actually using those abilities.

Too often in games I've played that started at higher levels one of two things happened: either the game crawled because everyone was trying to figure out what they could do "on the fly", or everyone just stuck to the old "hack or cast a spell" routine and then it's pretty much 1st level with more hit points and larger plusses.

I also fall into the category of being most interested in playing through my characters' progression and growth and the more levels available to play through, the more I can do that.

I also find that first/lower level play encourages more roleplaying. The vast majority of my most memorable RP moments come from low level games and the lower levels of campaigns.

I could be wrong, but it seems like none of the posters so far have read the Dark Horse Comics graphic novel, Shepherd's Tale. It pretty well gives Book's entire back story including his operative past and criminal connections and will definitely answer all of your questions. It, along with the other Serenity collections in the series, is considered canon, so I recommend them to anyone who is a Firefly fan.

Since you've specifically said that it's bounty hunters trying to bring "her" back, the simple solution is that she has information that the villain needs, even if she isn't away of what that is. More complex options are that she's the daughter of one of his enemies/rivals that the villain had been holding hostage; she might be part of a prophecy that the villain is trying to stop or make sure happens; or she's a component of a ritual which might, or might not require her being sacrificed. You can always keep her in the dark about what this knowledge/situation is which would be a fun excuse to run some "flash back" scenes/adventures that would give her a chance to figure out what the details are.

If she took something of importance, the pursuers would be more likely trying to get the object, not her, and if she "saw something she shouldn't have", it would more likely be assassins after her.

I've always been fond of the old Tibbit race of catwere's and they would fit right in with your witchy theme. I played one once that I gave one level of warlock to and then described my arcane blasts as ranged cat scratches.

Tibbit.

'tis the season and I am moved and inspired by your generosity. Thank you very much!

It's been years since I posted, but I'll break my silence to be included. Even if I'm too late, cheers and happy holidays!