Project Violet's page

Hi everyone!

Jim Milligan, here. I'm the author of "A Broken Sky," the first Condensed Campaigns product from Evil Robot Games, and I thought I'd start this conversation thread up just in case any of you Pathfinder Second Edition folk have been looking at our product and wondering what it can offer you (you know beyond what it says on the tin).

I'd love to answer any questions you've got, or even just provide info-dumps for folks who've picked up the book (or are thinking of doing so), so as to help drum up interest and understanding about what it is we're doing, here.

(If you'd like one of my first bits of exposition, about getting around in A Broken Sky, just click that link to go to the ERG site, where Paul compiled one of my Twitter threads.)

(For a thread about the Avalar in A Broken Sky, and how the world shattering has affected their people, here's another link)

You can get the PDF version here on the Paizo site (just follow link on the page!), and we will be offering a Print On Demand from Drive Thru RPG just as soon as the files clear Pre-Flight.

I'll also be offering some bonus content on my Patreon for subscribers!

I hope you enjoy our product, and I'm really looking forward to bringing you more in the days to come. Look for something that may or may not be fantasy mecha in our next Condensed Campaign book. :)

The San Francisco Metro.

Twenty-three million people, packed together in a massive super city; never sleeping, never resting; a constant, living exultation to the unending consumer cycle. The city reaches into the clouds, a pinnacle of engineering and scientific miracles. The towers and spires defy gravity, reaching up in a mockery of the ancient, decaying urban sprawls that once covered The Outside in a never-ending web of concrete and glass. The Metro holds itself aloft through science and power, using gravity and wind against themselves, strengthening the glittering spires with the very forces that seek to tear them down.

175 square kilometers of land lie buried beneath the colossal bulk of The Metro, the ruins of the Old Era lurk, hidden in the Sub Ways like catacombs, filled with the debris and dust of decades come and gone. The lowest of The Metro's strata, the Sub Ways are the last refuge of the cast-offs and dregs of the world. When not even The Rafters and DownTown will take you, when the world of MidTown is closed off, and UpTown is nothing but the subject of an anger-fueled vengeance dream, the Sub Ways are where you go.

These are the domains of brutal, cold survival. Air can defy your lungs, robbing you of oxygen in the blink of an eye. The Downtown Aqua Farms, supplying the world above with life-giving Krill, Algae, and clean water, exert immense pressure on the crumbling, decaying tunnels, which can come crashing down around you at the slightest noise. The Sub Ways are run by clans, coming together to survive, selling remnants of the Old Era and cast-off technology that somehow avoids the recycle bins. Where The Rafters are a mass of necessary ingenuity and the unrelenting repurposing of resources to keep the unemployed masses alive, the Sub Ways are a warren of desperation and mutual protection pacts. Gangs eke out small empires through force and the promise of a gentle hand for the faithful, for a time, before being overthrown and starting the cycle again. And there are things living down here. People go missing. Sometimes they come back, scared of their own shadow, aching for light.

Carrie "Carrie On" Mendez, stands, alone, on an old metal bridge. She's cold, despite the layers of thermal weave she's wearing. It's icy, down here: bone-chillingly cold, with the kind of dampness that cuts through a body's flesh and gets in to their blood. Nevertheless, she smiles, giving a two-finger victory wave at the small Gabby Gabby Livesream drone that even now hovers around her.

"Are we good?" she asks the drone, which beeps at her in response, a green light blinking to life. It wasn't easy getting a signal down here, but fifteen kilos of algae paste and a new filter for a water pump got her the use of a good, strong router just a short distance away at the Coleberg Camp. From there, it's a jump to another router at the Albertson's Corner, and then a third hop to the access tunnel that got her down here, at the corner of Jennings and Wallace, in The Rafters. She's got a friend, there, Cassidy, who's watching the door to the tunnel, bribing off the maintenance workers and anyone else who wants to mess with the equipment - small packages of food will do a lot in terms of keeping the curious moving along their way. Behold... the power of cheese.

Carrie On is a new breed of Social, here to prove to the rest of her Culture that she and the rest of her tiny breed have a right to cozy up with the Spillers and the Thrillers. Chillers mingle the two, merging the always-on lifestyles of the Spillers with the heart-pounding adrenaline rushes of the Thrillers. Chillers go in to the dark and nasty places, their night-vision goggles rigged to feed directly to their media apps, their drones giving them birds-eye views of strange and hidden places. Chillers go looking for ghosts and things that go bump in the night, searching out the urban legends of The Metro - the apocryphal God Bomb supposedly buried at the base of the city, a leftover "nuclear reset switch" from the Cybershock Era, just before The Metro was built. Or the Flipper Babies supposedly thrown out of their growth tanks at BioNetTek, let loose in the sluices and refresher pools leading to what's left of the bay. And sometimes, Chillers just want to go find a good, solid scare for their viewers: you can't beat a good, solid screamfest.

"Babies," Carrie smiles into the drone's pickup. She hefts a crowbar in her right hand. "Today, we are going to tear up the town! And by 'town,' I mean a whole bunch of warehouses buried down here in the nowhere lands, and by 'tear up' I mean take this crowbar and break open a whole bunch of doors and see what's down here."

A stream of likes and affirmations scroll across Carrie's augmented reality HUD, the tiny disks on her temples feeding a line of information across her vision.

"Hey, don't worry," she smiles, patting the outline of a handgun hidden under her coat. "I'm packing KeiKei Style. They're your Life Brand, don't forget!"

Carrie's drone follows her in to the dark as she descends down the ladder, flitting this way and that, getting all her best angles. The ladder creaks and groans, and more than once, Carrie nearly loses her grip, as the metal is slick with a coating of mold and slime. Eventually, she makes her way to the bottom, turns, and smiles at the camera.

It's then that she notices that the broadcast light has gone off.

Officially, the autopsy report says that she fell, and broke her neck. When her contact at the Colberg Camp came to check on her, they found her at the base of the ladder. Her drone's batteries long dead, there was little to do but report it to MetroSec, send her body back up to MidTown, where she lived. Get it all on the record, reported and on paper, before anyone thought that it would be a good idea to report the Campers for murder. Make sure no one in MetroSec got it in their heads that maybe putting a boot on the lowest of the low was a thing to do.

That was three days ago. Three days of her followers mourning her death. Three days of them creating memorial groups, and holding online meetings, where they debate her greatest moments. Three days of them filtering out to find new celebrities to follow, new faces to worship.

This morning, Emily received a package, delivered anonymously, but with a specific courier request - whoever sent it insisted that BART be the one to deliver it.

Inside the package is an old, Cybershock Era memory card. The memory card is, anachronistically, new. Nothing Emily has will fit the card, nor even read it. The technology is outdated, archaic, and - for the most part - worthless in terms of today's storage methods and capacities.

The question is, now, what to do with it?

***

All players up, but specifically Emily and BART.

For the opening post in our Discussion Thread, I'd like to say a couple of things to those who might be observing:

Hello and welcome to our observational playtest for both The Metro campaign setting and the Power Core RPG that fuels it.

Please feel free to post here (or message me directly) if you have any questions about the game. I'll answer them directly, or indirectly (by repeating them here in the thread) for you as soon as possible. Questions about mechanics ("Why are skill specializations handled the way they are?" for instance), setting ("What's the story with Cultures?") or anything else related to the game is fair to ask about. If I can't answer it for non-disclosure or similar reasons, I'll say so.

A lot of this game is going to be exactly as you would expect a forum-run game to be: The GM (that's me) setting the scene and describing the scenario, the players posting actions, the GM (still me) responding, and so forth.

When mechanics need to be used, such as a skill roll, or combat and damage, or healing, or what-have-you, I'll make an OOC entry in the relevant post, explaining what needs to take place. The players will then follow through on their end as necessary.

Power Core is designed to be a modular, expandable system, enabling it to adjust to the need of the GM and players. For The Metro we're using it at something of a "Medium" setting - the rough default from which other types of play are derived - and so we will be using nine Primary Attributes, several Figured Attributes, a Beat Chart, Skill Specializations, and Fixed Wound Values (meaning all major characters have the same number of Wounds) for player characters.

Okay! I hope we have your attention, and I hope you enjoy what you see.

Next up, a note for the players.

Atomic Rocket Games and Evil Robot Games are close to releasing our new science-fiction/Cyberpunk-genre campaign setting, The Metro, using our new in-house system, The Power Core RPG.

We (well, I) will be running a Play-By-Post playtest campaign here on the forums. Why?

* - Because these forums are the largest, best, most chock-full of intelligent, diverse gamers in the world.

* - Because Power Core will be a class- and level- free, non-d20 addition to the OGL family of game systems.

* - Because enabling gamers outside the core playtest group to see how the game works is an ideal and transparent method of showing people what we hope (and know) the system and the setting can do.

How's it going to go?

My players will post their character concepts here in this recruitment thread, and we will go through their build process, showing how it's done, and detailing their characters in a step-by-step form.

Once that's done, the Discussion thread will be where we talk game mechanics and setting particulars. My players will ask questions on a regular basis (questions you as observers might have!), and they'll be answered based on the rules and the setting.

Can I join the game?

Unfortunately, there are no available playtest slots at this time. We have our testers (we've worked with all of them before), and all four slots are full.

Can I get a peek at the rules?

Not at this time. This is for confidentiality on the rules and for legal reasons, as well.

Can I observe the game?

Please do!

What is Power Core?

Power Core is a class- and level- free RPG ruleset that will be released under the OGL upon completion. Its first campaign setting - The Metro, a high-rise world of culture-shock, futurism, and malleable humanity - has been under construction for some time, and will be detailed as part of the playtest.

What's in Power Core?

Power Core uses a 2d6 + Attribute + Modifiers vs Difficulty Class resolution system, making it both familiar and easy to pick up.

The system offers a broad skill and reputation system, enabling players and GM's to tailor their games with both skills and organizations that are custom-built for the campaign with minimal effort.

Power Core also offers an adaptable combat system, a fully-integrated mecha/vehicle/weapon construction system, and much more.

What's in The Metro?

Ambiguous history. Balkanized subcultures. Sexy androids. Enormous skyscraper cities. Mystery and Adventure. Corporate Nation States. Spicy Krill On A Stick. Synthetic Life Forms. Flying cars.

When does it start?

The discussion and gameplay threads will go live on May 1, 2018. The players will start posting their character builds here in this thread then, as well. There will be a 1/week minimum update, either from players, or myself.

Sounds great!

Aw, thanks! We hope so!

Hey folks,

So I just moved to the central Oregon area (Willamette River Valley, Albany specifically) from the SF Bay Area, and I need a group!

I've been here since the first of May and let me tell you I'm having a devil of a time finding a group that's available to play on the days I am. So many problems.

In any event, I'm looking to feel out a new group or start one of my own.

I play Pathfinder, (some) D&D 5, Cyberpunk 2020, Mekton Zeta, HERO 5/Champions, and a whole lot more. I also run all of the same.

If anyone's got room or needs a group, let's talk.

(My brother lives around the corner from me, as well, and also needs a group, so you may get a package deal!)

Hey folks,

If someone (possibly yours truly) were pretty close to putting together the system data for a cyberpunk genre source/campaign book (in which the world data is all ready to go - it's just rules time now), which would you prefer to see it in?

The options most likely available are:

An OGL ruleset, set up to be class-free, with some fairly streamlined combat, armor, and damage rules that will (hopefully) render things far more cinematic.

OR!

A Savage Worlds ruleset, fairly stock/standard, with changes inserted as necessary and only where appropriate.

This is a seriously informal poll, but if you've got any feedback on those options (or have a third option you're willing to evangelize), I and my writing partner would love to hear about it.

Thanks!

Since the issue with the forums breaking (wherein no one was able to get to the forums because all attempts to do so redirected to the main page, unless we used direct links), I've been noticing that opening a tab to the forums causes my browser to slow down tremendously.

Checking this over the past couple of days, it appears to be consistent.

I've been monitoring system activity, and immediately upon opening a tab to the forums, the Firefox Web Activity process jumps to 100+ percent for CPU load and stays there for several minutes. Attempting to open any forum thread repeats this activity. At no point does the process drop below 90% CPU.

Closing the tab immediately returns the process to its normal 6-9% activity state.

I'm using Firefox 51.0.1 64-bit on Mac OS 10.11.6 on an Intel 2.8Ghz i7, with no other applications running except Terminal and all non-essentials killed or slept, while testing this.

This only occurs with the Paizo forums, no other websites (not even the usually resource-hungry Facebook). I have not tested in other browsers.

Is there a back-end script or process call on the forums that could be chewing up resources like this? I'm hesitant to blame it on Firefox, given the behavior observed.

Color me curious.

Apologies if this has been asked before. I ran a search on the forum and was unable to find the answer.

The Compatibility License states:

You may not use this License for products that the general public would classify as "adult content," offensive, or inappropriate for minors.

If I'm correct, this qualifies as such things as:

Intentionally salacious content
Gratuitous nudity and/or sexuality
Discussions of items pornographic or prurient in nature

This would explain why an item such as Sisters Of Rapture cannot use the compatibility license.

Would the prohibition extend to a genre (cyberpunk/science-fiction) source book that dealt with topics such as:

Drugs
Crime
Prostitution
Politics
Profanity (used sparingly and in context to the inline fiction)
Mentions of sexuality/gender

And other such genre-specific items.

Would these items qualify as restricted, thus removing compatibility license eligibility?

The Pathfinder comics and several published sourcebooks deal with similar topics (especially in terms of gender/sexuality of their characters), and have had coverage of similar items.

If the intent of the mentions of these topics is to deal with them in the context of the supplemental material, matter-of-factly where possible, would these constitute prohibited material?

Thanks in advance for any input/insight.

Hi folks,

Some of us (the people who've been following ZN's Cyberpunk 2020 recruitment thread, mostly) have noticed that it's been over a month since ZN posted anything here on the boards.

Given that he was about to start a game, did not make an "I'll be out for a while" post, has not checked in with anyone, and isn't answering PM's, it's easy to see why we're worried. And not just because of the game, though I'm sure you see that.

Does anyone here on the boards know ZN personally?

Does anyone live in the general ZN area, and are they able to help make a wellness check?

ZN's a good person and a good presence on the boards, and I'd really like to make sure that nothing bad has happened.

Paizo community, would you be of assistance, please?

Thank you kindly.

So talking to a friend last night about such things, it hit me that I'm sure we all have stories of the times when our players not only missed the obvious, blatant clue, but actively seemed to avoid them outright.

I thought I'd start a thread with some examples and see what everyone else had to share.

Let's begin...

The "What Do You Mean, We Have To Think?" Bit...

So I ran an X-Files/Fringe/Alias type game, which was full of conspiracies and double-dealings, and aliens and weird demonic possessions and crazy ancient life forms kept suspended in fossilized eggs found buried in Pre-Mesopotamian tablets that shouldn't have existed in Utah but did... all that junk.

At the end of one of the sessions, the PC's were all sent a series of coordinates (Point A, Point B), times, and dates. Seven of these were the trajectories and points of incidence of various "meteors" and "debris objects" that had transited over the North American continent in the last 50 years. The eighth, which had a time and date only 12 hours prior to when they got the emails, was an undocumented transit that - had they followed it - would have led them to a downed UFO.

I ended the session with them getting these emails, and told them that they had two weeks (until our next session) to figure out what to do with them.

Two weeks pass.

Not one of them had bothered to look up the data. Not one of them bothered to check out the coordinates. There had been literally no traction on their part. When I asked why, the unanimous answer was "Well, we didn't know what you wanted us to do with them!" The thought of plugging any of those numbers into a quick google search had evaded all of them.

The game died shortly after that, but not for reasons related to that.

The "Captain Amazing Doesn't Wear Glasses" Bit...

In my Inter Planar Acquisitions Game, in which the PC's were operating out of Sigil as specialized Contracted Artefact Retrieval Experts, they at one point resurrected a previously known NPC, one Ben-I-Amin Ibn Al Farud (he had a longer name he would recite when he wanted to impress people), affectionately known as "Benny." Think Beni from The Mummy and you're not far off. Benny had been left behind on a jungle planet inhabited by giants and their crazed Serpent God fifty years prior by another group of PC's for selling them out. This group of PC's knew why he'd been left behind, but they needed him for information.

So they resurrect him. He swears he's learned his lesson, and goes on to become a model citizen.

So later they find some correspondence between a Dustman who's gotten a little too happy with Death and Misery, and his conspirator. The letter opens "Benjamin..."

The PC's decided that this couldn't be Benny, because his name is Ben-I-Amin. If it was Benny, the Dustman would have spelled the name correctly, right?

So for several sessions, they were talking to Benny about this Benjamin character and how they had to find him to shut down his illegal corpse trade.

"Oh, no, my friends, once again the lair of the evil Benjamin has been vacated just before we arrived. If only we knew who was tipping him and his vile compatriots to our plans!"

The "I've Seen Her Naked, She Can't Be Evil" Bit...

The game is Champions, the years are the mid-90's, and my players are helping an NPC they know only as "Traveler" to defeat the evil immortal magician who lives on the moon who once fought alongside the Nazi's and has apparently been secretly manipulating super human lineages in order to bring about the "correct" future. Super shady stuff to be sure.

As they learn to trust her more, they find that more and more of their former foes are now showing up wearing gold and green symbols and swearing their allegiance to "The True Lady Of Camelot." The death and rebirth of King Arthur is a common theme in this game, and so they start figuring out that maybe, just maybe, Morgana Le Fay is out there somewhere.

Traveler, who is Elfin and uses a magical sword and very, very potent spells, has a lot of knowledge about Morgana Le Fay, and reveals that she was a member of the Fairy Court of Avalon, and knew Arthur quite well, and that he "wasn't as nice a person as he's made out to be." The party Magician, who uses Arthurian Magic, knows pretty much everything there is to know about Arthur (including his reincarnation in the early 20th century and eventual death during WW2), continually refuses to make Knowledge Skill checks to ensure that what she's saying is correct, the player saying "He believes her implicitly, because of their relationship."

So, blinded by love and the fact that the character and NPC were romantically involved, the PC never once bothered to check up on what she was saying. When the shoe dropped and she was revealed to be Morgana Le Fay, come to finally kill Merlin and end Arthur's cycle of heroism, the Player lost a head gasket and demanded to know how I slipped all this past him. Ah, well.

Who's next?

In which my players provide in-character Social Media style reactions and thoughts about the events that surround and affect their characters.

My players will be posting their character's updates at least once a week, following our Monday night sessions.

If all three of my players post consistently, they get additional experience points in the game.

I hope you enjoy their updates and this journal.

***

The game begins on June 1, 2030. It's a Saturday, and ten thousand people are crammed into the San Jose Sports Plex, watching the final High School Varsity Basketball game of the school year, live in the Governor Brown Memorial Stadium. Outside, the summer heat beats down, hot and sticky and just this side of too-humid, but inside, the AC is turned up and everyone's comfortable and cool. The New Santa Clara Arcology High Lancers, long favored to win the championship, face off against their rivals and scoring-equals, the Santa Cruz Aqua City Scorpions. Both teams have shown strong performances all the way here, and are tied in their playoffs. This game is it. The deciding victory.

It's 7:30pm, and the NCSA High competition cheer team, the Songbirds, have finished their half-time performance. They're doing a foot-stomping, butt-shaking, high-falling routine to an upbeat pop cover of an old Silverhand and the Samurai tune, "(Out Of) The City." It's a catchy tune, and you can dance to it, now. The Synth Pop Idol singer's voice has been autocorrected and overtuned to mask any hint of her back-country Appalachian origins. She's the next Micki, the up and coming New Thing, and all the girls love her style.

Bob and John Sampson, the popular morning show sports reporting duo from everyone's favorite all-hit radio station, launch into a duologue about teamwork and esprit de corps, citing how the local team, the Lancers, may be facing their toughest opposition yet, but they're a TEAM, and as they say goodbye to Senior Class Valedictorian and star Center Jonah M'Tembla, they're saying hello to a winning addition to the world of business and the meritocracy of the corporate world. Why, whatever corporation snatches Jonah up (and we've heard there are some very important scouts from both EBM and Biotechnica in the crowd today!), we're sure they're getting more than what they pay for, by far!

The Lancers and the Scorpions take to the court as the Songbirds tumble off into the sidelines, and the ball goes up...

***

Any of my fellow Paizonians going to be at Clockwork Alchemy in San Jose this upcoming Memorial Day weekend?

I will happily sit down for a cup of tea and a chat with anyone who wishes to do so!

Let us be nerds in a convention that is nerdy and also full of other nerds!

The title of the thread says it all.

Anyone using the Hexographer, Cityographer, or Dungeonographer software?

What are your thoughts on it?

Can you show me something you've done with it? Has it been of use in your games?

I've no longer got access to a Windows box with Campaign Cartographer on it, I don't feel like wrestling with that much "You Must Know This Much CAD To Ride" any more, and something that evokes a more old-school feel sounds very appealing to me.

Anyone got any history with these tools?

For those of you who dig on hard science in their survivalist science fiction, I'd like to suggest you take a mosey over to your Friendly Local Book Store (or Amazon, or wherever you buy books) next week and pick up Andy Weir's "The Martian."

It's the story of Mark Watney, the first man to be left for dead on Mars, who rapidly becomes the first man to be stranded (and survive) on that frigid red world.

You can find more information here, if you want it.

I've read it in its pre-publication form (three times, actually), and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Andy's the creator of a good many things, including some bang-up RPG sessions, the Casey and Andy webcomic, the well-reddited story "The Egg," and many others. I think this novel is right up the alley for all of you Science Fiction loving Paizonians, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Technically off-topic, but, if it please you...

I know a lot of us have Deviant Art galleries (mine's here, for instance), but I know a lot of us are also in to that whole "writing" thing just as much (if not more).

So, why not a thread to chat about such things and draw attention to our endeavors? The folks here are particularly awesome when it comes to support and constructive criticism, so I figure: Let's do it!

I'm currently serializing "Number One With A Bullet," a ~14K word classic-Gibsonian-Cyberpunk novelette over at my fiction-specific tumblr:

Like Madness In The Spring

Additionally, I'm doing some game-world related essays at my blogspot link:

Dispatches From Deep Space

What about the rest of you folks?

What'cha got?

So it recently came to light that several of my acquaintances (not my friends, mind) think I'm a paid shill for some games/companies. For instance, I often espouse the virtues of Star Wars Saga as a "good proto-4E that didn't get its rightful due," and I've been known to suggest R. Talsorian's Interlock (Cyberpunk 2020, Mekton, etc) as a good catch-all system for many different games in many different genres. I probably do it as much or more than my HERO and GURPS-loving friends.

Now, I'm not a shill for either WOTC or RTG (although I have done paid work for RTG more than once), but after having it pointed out that I really do pretty much always say "Yeah, we can do that in Interlock," or the like... it's got me wondering.

I can't be the only one. Surely, the rest of you have your Go-To game systems for games that don't necessarily fit clearly onto a particular peg... that "Sort of like Firefly, only with Xenomorphs" game, maybe. Or the "What if Batman and Robin were in the 1950's" campaign, perhaps.

So what are some of yours? You like these games so much, you can pretty much do anything with them. And what have you done with them, that wasn't necessarily what they were designed for?

For instance, with Interlock, I have recently run:

- Batman-style, down and on-the-street caped crusaders
- Firefly-meets-Blake's-Seven
- Multi-National Superheroics In Four Colors
- Secret Shadow Government Psychics fighting Colonist-minded Aliens

How about you?

So I already opened a huge can of worms over on the Mekton Zeta Mailing List with this thought experiment, but let's say you were making an RPG inspired by and influenced by G1 Transformers (for simplicities sake I'm referring only to the cartoon, here).

What three things would you want to see in it?

Me? I'd want to see:

- A convincing backstory. I want a decent reason that my red-emblem bots are fighting the purple-emblem 'bots.

- A quick and easy character generation system that doesn't get bound up in numbers, but instead lets me make my 'bot with minimum effort, while resulting in above-average customization.

- Combiner rules that don't suck.

Now, some of the replies that I got over on the MZML were pretty insightful, while others ran down the gamut of petty stabs at the recent CG/Live movies. Many included non-G1 sources and referenced obscure Japanese continuations of the original series (and by obscure I mean just that - not the big stuff like Headmasters, but the obscure side-stories off in fanzines and whatnot).

I'm interested to see what my fellow Paizo-boardians might come up with when presented with the same criteria for a "wish-list."

Not looking for "use this system" or "use this ruleset," here. This is strictly a Top Three Wish List.

Ready?

Go!

I don't see another thread dealing with this, so, here, have one.

Is it just me, or are the Racial Weaknesses under utilized and overly specific?

Now, before I go any further, I realize that I am free as a GM to Rule Zero anything and say "This Race has the following weakness," and that's all fine and well. I fully intend to.

However, and there is always a however, of the six weakness abilities listed (four Standard, two Advanced), we have four that deal with sunlight, and two that do not. This is, I feel, a great and terrible oversight. There is a lot that could be done, here.

I won't pretend to have a complete list of suggestions, but I do think that "All these races hiding from the light" will get old really fast. Racial weaknesses that are not tied to size, speed, or linguistics currently seem to be geared specifically overlook a great deal of potentially adverse situations, while zeroing in on the rather stereotypical "Dark Things Of The Night" tack.

Again, there's nothing really wrong with this, given that so many of the non-standard PC races live underground or are generally considered to come from evil, anti-light-and-goodness backgrounds (c'mon, how many of you play Drow? Be honest, now!), so I suppose it's understandable.

But what about a race that was "Created in the dim times, as a servant to the Ancient Men. Pleasing in form, but weak in spirit, they do not linger when their blood is spilled, expiring and passing from the Waking World as quickly as a candle is snuffed out," hm?

What if I want a race that takes an extra point of damage per round when bleeding to death?

What if I want a race that takes an extra point of damage/effect from poisons?

What if I want a race that is vulnerable to Negative Energy damage?

Perhaps a race that is especially susceptible to Illusions/Enchantments, taking a -2 Will Save against them?

A cold-blooded Serpent-borne race that suffers a -2 penalty to Initiative in very cold environments?

One of these can be reskinned from another (Elemental Vulnerability), but the others cannot.

There are some categories of weaknesses that are missing, here, I think. Like I said, I won't pretend to believe that I can list them all off, but just off the top of my head, I can easily see a need for:

* - Skill Penalty Weakness
* - Save Penalty Weakness
* - Damage Penalty Weakness

For my own game world, I took a look at my various "Type: Humanoid, Subtype: Created" races, and found that not a one of them comes anywhere close to 10 points. That's okay, I think they're more-or-less balanced with Humans, and my players do, too.

But what I found is that I can't properly map the various racial weaknesses (all of which are listed up above), even if I stretch quite a ways and reskin things like Light Blindness or Elemental Vulnerability.

I'm really interested to hear/read/converse about this. I'm sure I can't be the only one who's noticed it.

(Or, How I Learned To Capitalize Every Word In A Thread Title And Love The Bomb)

Talking with my group earlier this week, we found ourselves reminiscing about old campaigns that we'd run, and it came up that most of the group really loves it when I run a game, because there's always some interesting twist in the adventure that they never see coming. Whether it's Boba Fett hunting the party across four separate adventure plots, only to finally corner them on the Luxury World of Thera Sur, at gun point, just to deliver a birthday present to the Noble from his estranged parents - including singing a birthday song and then wandering off muttering "I really need to change my bounty requirements," or the discovery that the Heroes have really been the Villains the entire time (that was a fun one), I tend to come up with some interesting twists that folks find memorable.

One of the best loved twists was a Planescape game I ran, in which Xin Qi, the fussy, gold-threaded robes wearing, dragon-motif emblazoned Fire Mage hired the party to find "Something of great import," and offered to pay them in rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and other valuable gemstones as large as a human fist.

Through the entire story line, the players were absolutely convinced that Xin Qi was a Gold Dragon in Human form. Even though they never saw him cast a spell over 2nd Level, and he never actually entered into any dangerous situations with them (he'd run and hide and shout in pseudo-Chinese at their enemies to run away because "They are powerful warriors! You'd best flee!"), and was shown repeatedly to be of frail constitution and cowardly nature. Absolutely convinced that he was a Gold Dragon.

At the end of the story-arc, it was revealed the Xin Qi was actually the Improved Familiar of a Juvenile Gold Dragon, who'd realized that life on The Great Wheel was dangerous, and he needed more help than a raven or toad could provide. And since Summoning on The Wheel tends to always go a bit jumbly, the nearest, most appropriate candidate for the spell was good old Xin Qi. The looks on the players faces when they rescued a caged, beaten, battered, but still very regal Gold Dragon from an Orichalcum cage in the mountain fortress of the Oni general Tsu Ji Xun The Black Eyed Storm... priceless.

PC Wizard: "Wait... the DRAGON is the Wizard? That means..."

Xin Qi: "Yes. Noble Astral Regent Of The Morning Meadow is my Master. I am but his humble servant."

PC Wizard: "You're his FAMILIAR, aren't you?"

*players at table give a collective "Whaaaaaa?" as suddenly all of Xin Qi's actions start to make perfect sense*

That was the same campaign where several of the PC's had to find gates through time as well as space, make their way back to their home plane, steal (as they would find out near the end of the campaign) their own souls - the act of doing so ended up turning their now soulless bodies into the perfect receptacles for three evil entities who would go on to become the absolute overlords of their Prime world - then ensure that their souls wound up on the proper planes for them to be molded into their current selves. Through the doing of this, they gained enough experience, moral conviction, and knowledge to confront the Great Dark Three and put an end to their cycle of tyranny, destruction, and domination - thus freeing their Prime world from a cycle of evil that had dominated it for thousands of years. So, in the end, the PC's themselves were the villains and the heroes of the piece. They never saw it coming, thinking only that they'd been initially hired by the Proxies of a trio of Fate Gods to save a few innocent lives and put those same kids on the path to vengeance - only realizing at the end what they'd truly accomplished.

So...

What are some twists that you threw in that your players never saw coming, and still talk about to this day? Let's hear 'em.

The "x10 gp" text on the Magus Starting Wealth display on the PRD is above and outside the table it should be in:

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateMagic/spellcasters/magus.html

A minor issue, to be sure, but there nonetheless.

Over here, in Ultimate Magic (Building and Modifying Constructs):

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateMagic/magic/introduction.html#bu ilding-and-modifying-constructs

Just a couple of small things, but you have seven page number references in short order, when they should be linked to separate sections of the PRD (or removed entirely).

Thought you'd want to know!

Yet another thought experiment, here.

Say I want to run a Hyborian Age, Bare-chested-barbarians-fighting-giant-spiders-and-snake-cultists, style game. A game where your characters run around attempting to solve the riddle of steel. Where they sneak into towers dedicated to ancient gods to steal the fire-gems of Hash-Seth-Ta, used as eyes in the mighty statue of the two headed God of Pain, Raman-Kur.

A game in which, it goes without saying, running around in heavy armor (or, for that matter, ANY armor) is just not going to happen. This would have to be a game that would result in copious amounts of single-warrior-against-hordes-of-foes, cackling wizards duking it out by summoning flocks of crows and bolts of lightning, and super sneaky thieves and archers sniping at one another from behind the stones of ancient ruins. Suffice to say, my players are all over this idea.

I'd thought about perhaps using MM3E, or Savage Worlds, or Interlock or Fuzion... heck, even HERO, but my players are really keen on getting back into PFRPG. And thus, the conundrum!

So here's the question - Anyone have any experience running a Pathfinder game in which Defense Bonuses (perhaps a-la Star Wars Saga or D20 Modern) are used instead of Armor Bonuses? Sure, you could have Karmag The Northman running around in Plate Armor and a Large Steel Shield, but would that truly work for the feel of the game? I think not.

I suppose one could use Bracers of Armor and Rings of Protection and Necklaces of Armor, sure, but would that truly evoke the feel? Maybe?

My thoughts were to work up a series of "Base Defense Bonuses" for each available Class, most likely equivalent to each Class's BAB - so a Full BAB would get a Full BDB, a 3/4 BAB would equal a 3/4 BDB, etc. The more combative classes would of course be better at fending off blows from their foes, while the poorly trained classes (Wizards, for instance) would of course be in a world of hurt without hordes of minions or magical protections to keep the swords of their enemies off of their frail mortal forms (which, if you think about it, is absolutely perfect for the genre).

Anyone have any thoughts, suggestions, or tales of success or failure to share?

I'd really appreciate it.

Not sure if this belongs in General or in Home Brew... Heck it might even belong in Advice..., so I'm going with General as a default. If this is in the wrong forum, moderators do please feel free to move it.

So, here's a question for you, Pathfinders!

Let's say that I am working up a rules update to my longest running fantasy game world (Loris - a "Stuck in the Early Renaissance Era," Low-to-Mid Magic, Political Intrigue meets Wartorn Landscape type world), and I want to get off of 3.x and bring it up to Pathfinder. I've already considered moving it to another system (M&M 3E, for one, HERO for another, and Fuzion for a third) and decided that since I already have so much invested in the D20/OGL ruleset that I'll simply bring it up to Pathfinder.

Okay, so that's step one.

Step two, I sit down and look at what I have. A quick tally tells me that:

- I have long since replaced Fighter/Wizard/Rogue/Cleric with variants (heck, way back in 2E, no one was allowed to play a Fighter that wasn't a Kit, and all Clerics had to be Specialty Priests). There are no such things as Bards, no Sorcerers, and Assassin is a job, not a Class.

- I have a very strong urge to toss the Vancian magic system out and replace it with a per-encounter style system not entirely unlike that presented in Star Wars Saga (not the same, mind, as that's not OGL, but similar).

- I really don't want to lose my old Social Status and Wealth tables, because I feel they more accurately model the potentials for disparity between someone's Social Status and their actual monetary Wealth. But, at the same time, I really don't want to do a lot of conversions over to the GP/SP/CP standards (again)

- Races, Nations, Skills, these are already set from their old 3.x counterparts. A few updates here and there, many of which I'd already done (combining the various awareness skills into Perception, for instance). This is easy.

So after putting that tally together, I start muddling about with the PFRPG and realize something:

If I remodel magic (both Divine and Arcane) and I re-do the various classes (get rid of Fighter, replace with Swordsman, Soldier, Rifleman and Berserk, for instance), and I change up the way money is handled...

Is this now a "Pathfinder Compatible" project, or am I in fact making an entirely new OGL product?

I'm not new to tearing down systems and using a bit of jiggery-pokery to eliminate problem mechanics and/or bolster the ones that work, but at what point does it stop being "I'm tweaking this class" and start being "So my new system should be ready for beta soon"?

And, more to the point - how many of you have had these issues, and what did you do?

Did you dive in and stay down until you got it done?

Did you say "slag it" and just go with the default rules?

Did you find some happy medium?

An inquiring mind wants to know! :D

So...

Is the girl doll in the Soulbind Doll illustration a Souldoll or a Dollmore BJD? She resembles products from both. Having many friends who collect the things, I instantly recognized her as one of those two brands. ;)

The "native" doll also resembles one seen on a certain 1980's prime-time spooky-serial tv show... ;)

Also, have I seen that piece on DeviantArt? It looks really familiar!

So I've been sitting 'round, putting the middle refinements and touches on my submission, making sure that the cost is correct, and all, and it occurs to me that I may not be eligible to enter.

I refer of course to this clause on the FAQ:

http://paizo.com/rpgsuperstar/faq#v5748dyo5lbm7

Because we are trying to discover new talent, anybody who has been published in the RPG industry in a significant way is not eligible to enter. If you have been employed full-time as a designer for a game company, you are not eligible. If you have received cover credit as an author of a hardcover RPG book, you are not eligible. If you have a cover credit on a printed Pathfinder or GameMastery product, you are not eligible. If you were one of the Top 8 finalists of any previous RPG Superstar contest, you are not eligible.

I wonder if, perhaps, I fall into a somewhat "Gray Area" where this is concerned. I do not wish, under any circumstances, to enter a contest that I am not eligible to enter - both for my own sense of fairness and for not wanting to irritate or otherwise upset the judges.

So here's my question:

I'm credited with half the Mecha designs in R. Talsorian's "Starblade Battalion" Mekton Zeta supplement. I was paid for this work.

I'm the creator of a handful of gangs in their Cyberpunk 2030 Gangbook. This work was unpaid.

I've been the driving creative force behind the (ridiculously small press - no money made, hundreds spent - my taxes hate me but it's worth it) entity that is Atomic Rocket Games, producing free-to-download micro-supplements for the Mekton Zeta RPG. This work is unpaid.

I wrote a macro-supplement back in 2001 - again for Mekton - which has never been published but for which I was paid.

None of these works are "hardcover," and of the works that have been published in any form (PDF counts, right?), I am not the author of any paid, "significant" work.

However - and there is always a however - It is entirely possible that what I have done may disqualify me from being eligible to enter.

In the interest of fair play and honesty, I'd really like to ask if an official from Paizo could let me know - either here or at my personal (and available from my profile) address - whether or not I should go ahead and submit my Wondrous Item. I apologize for bringing this to the forum, but I couldn't find a contact address that I felt was otherwise suitable for this question.

Thanks a ton, guys!

I put things in quotes because, invariably, I know that someone somewhere is going to ask the question of "What is Evil?" and I'd just as soon nip that in the bud right off the bat. For purposes of the discussion, I am using Evil as defined within the Alignment system.

Create Treasure Map, a spell found within the APG, requires that the caster carve a piece off of a dead opponent, which is then used as the primary material component and display surface for a map to what the creature considered treasure - be it a source of suitable mates, food, monetary wealth, etc.

The question then becomes - is it an Evil Act to actively carve up a dead foe to create a magical guidebook that has as its sole purpose the looting of the deceased foe's trove of goodies?

I would argue that while it may not be inherently Evil with a Capital E, it is certainly Amoral with a Capital A. The character is cutting a portion of flesh - skin, shell, carapace, what-have-you, off of their dead foe, muttering a few words and sprinkling it with magical pigments - and poof! Treasure map. The sole purpose of this spell is to find the loot and it uses Dead-Mans-Skin to do it. This is not the realm of "Good," here. I could certainly see a Neutral or Evil character using this spell as a method for personal gain, but without damned good reasoning, I would have a hard time with any Good aligned PC (or NPC) allowing the spell to be used in their presence (or use it themselves).

Thoughts?

If this question and/or a similar thread has already been created, well, I apologize. Someone with appropriate power is free to destroy the thread as they see fit. :D

I've checked all through the Feedback forum, so I apologize if this has been brought up and I just haven't seen it... but here we go:

I really dig the "Dot" (found threads on that) notifying me of a thread I've posted in. I appreciate the "(x) new" posts notification on each thread. It tells me how much I have to read through now that the thread is updated. These are very good things.

However.

(and there is always a however)

Would it be too server-intensive to provide a section at the top of our Messageboards page that said:

"The following threads you posted in have been updated since your last visit:

(Thread 1)
(Thread 1+n)
(Thread 2+n)"

And so on?

The reason I ask is because it can quite clearly become cumbersome and time consuming to go browsing back through each and every forum subsection one has posted in to find updated threads if one is a prolific contributor.

Compiling a list at the top of the page, or heck, even under our "Account" page in the Messageboards subsection, might go a long way to streamline things and make for happier users.

Just a thought!

Thanks!

So, for my first forum post, I'd like to provide a couple of compliments, a question, and some concerns. To begin at the beginning:

I really, really, appreciate the speed and efficiency with which my order was completed and carried out. I recently purchased the core Pathfinder book, the GM's screen, the bonus bestiary, and several of the free pdf's. The downloads were available immediately, and the books were shipped promptly. Absolutely fabulous. Thanks, guys. :)

I do have a question, however - I had originally placed an order on Amazon for the Core Pathfinder book several months ago. Over the course of that time, as my order moved from Pre-Order to Current Order, I was the unhappy recipient of several "delayed order" notifications. Even after the book was available, I continued to be told that the book was sold out, and that the "alternative buying" options were my best recourse. Amazon continued to delay my order, and customer service informed me more than once that the publisher had not restocked, nor made available for restock, the product with Amazon. Now, knowing full well that Paizo had them in the warehouse, I canceled my order, bought it from the Paizo store, and had it in my hands just over a week later. Muy Bueno.

However - why would Amazon maintain this stance? Is there something going on that we mere mortals don't know about, or is their procurement team simply not talking to Paizo properly? I was able to get the Bestiary from the big A, no problem, but the Core book? No dice.

And now, concerns.

First - I ordered my shipping to be sent via UPS, which offers a tracking number - but at no point in my account back-end could I find a link to track my package delivery. Where was this -supposed- to have been hiding? I work with web forms and user interfaces, and consider myself to be something of a decent investigator, but I could not find anything about package tracking in my user space. It is completely possible that I missed it, but I promise you, I looked.

Second - I appreciate that Paizo wants to protect my shipment, but wouldn't it be in your best interests to use more eco-friendly packaging? Opening my shipment, I found four largish styrofoam "corner bits," and a square foot of packing peanuts inhabiting the box along with my books. If you must use packing additives (as opposed to those new-fangled bio-plastics that you can shrink wrap the books to a backing board with, for instance), why not use the blown-starch style packing foam, or something similar? The items I did receive will simply populate a land fill for a few centuries, whereas other options can be safely disposed of by rinsing them down a drain (in the example of the blown-starch packing foam).

Third - One of my coworkers has the Core rulebook in PDF form - and I can't help but notice that the TOC is improperly associated and you have some Font embedding issues. What this means in Plain English is that several of the Table of Content links on the PDF are incorrect (Click on the Barbarian link and you get the Character Advancement data, or click on the Druid Class Features link and you get Cleric Domains (page 42)), and on some PDF readers (Acrobat Vs. Preview, for instance) the PDF renders some upper case letters incorrectly/invisibly. The prime example of this is the letter "A" in Armor in the Magic Arms and Armor section. I can't replicate this consistently, but I have seen it across multiple machines on different PDF readers. From my own experience, this is generally due to a simple font embedding preference made during the PDF conversion process. I don't have my copy of InDesign available, and I don't know if that's what Paizo uses, so I can't really offer an insight on that.

Regardless of these concerns, I really, truly, wanted to thank you for the outstanding product, and the clear, efficient way in which my order was handled. You guys rock! :D