Richard Moore's page

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND: Hi all! My name is Richard Moore, and when I'm not slowly losing my grasp on my sanity from designing and editing new RPG material for Jon Brazer Enterprises or one of the other companies for whom I freelance, I like to actually play RPGs, too! I also post on these forums under the name Power Word Unzip, and my campaign journals for Razor Coast got a fair amount of attention from the creators of that campaign and other GMs running the same mega-adventure. I've now decided to switch from the PWU moniker to using my real-name for my upcoming accounts of running Savage Tide.
I'll be starting a new campaign journal thread here for ongoing play reports from my current campaign, which is now branching out into the latter half of Paizo's Savage Tide, but will also use many of the maps, locations, and NPCs from Frog God Games' Razor Coast. I began running a seafaring campaign for my home group every Thursday back in July of 2013, and after a 15-month hiatus starting in February 2014 to play some other games, we resumed this campaign in May of 2015.

RESOURCES: To date, this campaign has utilized the following adventures and resources (not including the core Pathfinder RPG hardback line). (NOTE: Although we briefly dipped into the rules from Mythic Adventures for a portion of the campaign, it quickly became evident that they were just too overpowered and difficult for both players and GM to keep up with, so we dropped all usage of mythic rules shortly after beginning "The Krakenfiend Rises". The rest of the campaign will be vanilla Pathfinder.)
Adventures
The Wormwood Mutiny: We began our campaign by running this adventure, giving the PCs a chance to scramble up the ranks of a pirate crew and acquire their own ship.
Razor Coast: The meat of our first story arc, which utilized both of the main plotlines from Nicolas Logue's piratical masterpiece--"Night of the Shark" and "The Krakenfiend Rises".
Heart of the Razor: I ran "The Black Spot" as an interlude in the early stretch of Razor Coast's "Night of the Shark", injecting a dose of warped sci-fi action into the mix.
Bloody Jack's Gold: This D&D 3.5-compatible adventure from Goodman Games offered some great aquatic encounter set pieces and a dungeon-crawling diversion early on during "The Krakenfiend Rises".
Call of the Frog God: A Kickstarter-exclusive supplemental adventure for Razor Coast, the third act of this module features a fight with a pirate gang transformed into cthonic horrors deep within the belly of a great whale. Note that this adventure module is NOT available for purchase anywhere except perhaps on the secondary market, hence the lack of a product link.
Monster-Building Resources
Advanced Bestiary: A highly useful supplement for strengthening stock monsters or creating new ones. My smoke wendigo was created using these rules.
Book of Heroic Races - Advanced Merfolk: I pulled an NPC from this book, the sea-witch Orsolya, to replace the main villain in Bloody Jack's Gold.
Monster Menagerie - Oceans of Blood: This bestiary offers several interesting new monsters for seafaring campaigns, particularly the toothwraith, which I used to great effect in the finale of "The Krakenfiend Rises".

THE STORY SO FAR: Most of my campaign up until this point has been documented in the product discussion thread for Razor Coast. Links to specific posts containing accounts of those sessions follow.
1. A session bridging The Wormwood Mutiny to Razor Coast.
2. A foray into the sewers of Port Shaw.
3. The PCs are nearly hanged for piracy and escape to the Razor Sea.
4. The PCs investigate a virulent strain of lycanthropy, fight sahuagin on the Razor Sea, and spot a mysterious shipwreck...
5. First session write-up for "The Black Spot".
6. Second session write-up for "The Black Spot".
7. A raid on a slaver's hideout turns the party members against one another...
8. A Dragoon boarding party further inflames party in-fighting, and some new PCs are introduced.
9. The PCs raid the Dragoons' fortress, then flee to a faraway island to recruit new allies among the Tulita.
10. To win the allegiance of the Tulita, the PCs take on a fiendish threat that festers on the island of Kakeou, winning the favor of their deities in the process.
11. The PCs clear Beacon Island of monsters and prepare to defend Port Shaw against a slew of wereshark invaders.
12. We wrap up "Night of the Shark" before our long hiatus.
13. Part 1 of my summary of "The Krakenfiend Rises" (including our run-through of Bloody Jack's Gold and a quick dip into Journey's End from The Sea Wyvern's Wake), a location nearly identical to Razor Coast's Skull Sargasso that flowed well into the overall storyline).
14. Part 2 of my summary of "The Krakenfiend Rises" (including material from Call of the Frog God).

Our first session for Savage Tide will take place on Thursday, October 8th, 2015, when we'll begin City of Broken Idols. Stay tuned for more campaign journals!

Liz Courts and James Sutter were kind enough to let me have a few of the extra character sheets for the Rat Queens that were going around at the Delve tables, but I think I missed one: I could've sworn someone (Crystal Frasier, maybe) was playing Violet at a table I sat in on, and I didn't manage to get one of those. I currently have Hannah, Betty, Dee, Braga, and Sawyer, but I'm not sure how many were made.

Could any con goer who kept a Violet sheet, or any others I might have missed, be kind enough to PM me? I'd love to get a hi-res scan that I could print out to go with the others for my Big Book O' Rainy Day Character Sheets I keep in my game room. Thanks in advance!

The workshops are closed, and Santa's off on his journey. But there’s no rest for the elves. Santa’s mortal enemies, the abominable snowmen, attack each year as soon as the big man is gone. With hearts as cold as ice, they tear apart the gingerbread houses and toss themselves around, hoping to cause enough pain and destruction to ruin Christmas the following year.

But the North Pole is not defenseless. One person rallies the elves each year. One person trains with them in combat techniques and tactics. One person personally leads them in battle for one night each year to ensure that her husband can deliver toys to children next Christmas. That’s right: the leader of the elves is none other than Mrs. Claus, one of the most formidable holiday warriors on the planet.

This great module, originally written by Clint Black, has been expertly converted to Pathfinder and features a great new map from Fabled Environments. This supplement includes: rules for all-new Christmas tech like the Smore-11 marshmallow SMG, the Rudolph-6000 Deicer, snow globe grenades, and Treat-Mints; stats for Mrs. Claus, a formidable gunslinger in her own right; rules for making your own Christmas elf PCs OR a quick character generation process using a basic elf stat block with the simple class templates from the Monster Codex; and a new intelligent construct, the abominable snowman!

Download your copy of Throwdown at the North Pole today for only $3.00!

I'll be running through the last leg of Broken Moon on Friday, and I'm using mass combat rules from Paizo's Kingmaker Adventure Path and Jon Brazer Enterprises' Book of the River Nations to add a bit of depth to the scenario. The consensus among folks who have run CC is that most PCs are going to see the tower and beeline toward it without doing too much exploration, so I wanted to give the characters a reason to face off against a lot of these enemies and experience the sheer scale of the army that the Whispering Way has built up. Since this is a one-shot mass combat, I'm ignoring a lot of rules on consumption and BP in favor of rudimentary rules for movement and ranged combat.

I have recreated the map of the village on a dry erase grid, and I'm sticking to the 40-foot per square scale because that makes movement pretty simple to adjudicate. My general rule of thumb for army movement is that up to 50 creatures can inhabit a 40-foot square, so a Medium army of 100 creatures takes up two squares and a Large army takes up four. Most armies made of creatures with base speed 30 can move up to 2 squares per round; armies outfitted with medium or heavy armor or composed of creatures with low base speeds (such as dwarves) move at 1 square per round, while creatures with base speeds of 40 feet or more can move up to 3 squares each round (I don't think any of the creature types represented have movement speeds higher than that).

I also tinkered with some of the tactical options and special abilities because a few just didn't make sense (such as Sniper Support, which offers a clear benefit without any real drawback as a per-battle tactical option). Ranged attacks have a range of either 1 (for ranged weapons) or 2 (for magical resources).

Some of the NPCs featured in this chapter are available as NPC commanders, so the players will get to choose whether they command armies themselves or have their allies do it for them. I'm also making it so that PCs can travel with an army, but can disengage to challenge an enemy commander in single combat once the two armies are adjacent; distracting an enemy commander in this way makes that enemy's army forfeit any bonuses granted by the commander for the duration of the one-on-one combat (though of course multiple PCs can challenge a single commander, and vice versa).

Here are the stat blocks for the armies and information on how each commander boosts their army.

ALLIED COMMANDERS:

The Markiza & The Hound: Morale +3
Bonus Tactic: Taunt (enemy army must make a Morale check at a DC of 10 + your army’s CR at the start of each round or take a –2 penalty to DV and OM for that round; two consecutive successful Morale checks render the army immune to this tactic for the remainder of the battle)

Rhakis Szadro, Prince of Wolves: Morale +2
Bonus Special Ability: Bardsong (army makes a Morale check each round to gain a +1 DV and OM bonus for that round)

Margrave Cilas Graydon: Morale +3
Bonus Tactic: Cavalry Expert (+2 OM against armies that are not mounted)

Huntsmaster Delgros Kroitzcer: Morale +1
Bonus Special Ability: Mercenary (If paid 500 gp x the CR of the army he commands, Delgros raises the Morale of that army by an additional +1)

ALLIED ARMIES:

Lodge Hunters CR 2
Small army of humans (mounted archers)
COMBAT
hp 5; DV 13; OM 3 (range 1)
Tactics Sniper Support (–1 OM for +2 damage when in melee); Resources mounts, ranged weapons
LOGISTICS
Speed 2

Priests of Desna CR 2
Diminutive army of humans (celestial theurges)
COMBAT
hp 6; DV 17; OM 7 (range 2)
Tactics Spellbreaker; Resources healing 4 (2/day)*, improved armor (magic), improved weapons (magic), spellcasting
LOGISTICS
Speed 1

* I'm ruling that the Desnans can heal up to 4 hp of damage to either themselves or an adjacent army in lieu of making an attack or moving.

The Prince's Wolves CR 2
Medium army of humans (werewolves; shapechangers)
COMBAT
hp 10; DV 12; OM 12
Tactics Expert Flankers (+2 OM, –2 DV)
LOGISTICS
Speed 2

Avenging Primals CR 1
Tiny army of humans (Vollensag Stalkers; shapechangers)
COMBAT
hp 6; DV 11; OM 1
Tactics Relentless Brutality (+4 OM, –4 DV)
LOGISTICS
Speed 3

ENEMY ARMIES:

Cultists of the Way CR 4
Small army of humans (Whispering Way curates)
COMBAT
hp 16; DV 20; OM 10 (range 2)
Tactics False Retreat (Once per battle, your army can make a false retreat, luring the enemy deeper into your territory. On the round you make a false retreat, you cannot make an Offense check. On the round after a False Retreat, you gain +6 OM and +6 DV); Resources Improved Armor (magic), Improved Weapons (magic)
LOGISTICS
Speed 1
Leader Auren Vrood (Morale +3; Vrood can animate fallen cultists as ghouls once per battle, restoring 2 hp to his army and increasing its OM by 1)

Jezeldan Fanatics CR 2
Small army of humans (Demon Wolf Marauders; shapechangers)
COMBAT
hp 10; DV 14; OM 4
Tactics Dirty Fighters (+6 OM on first round of the melee phase); Resources Improved Armor (magic), Improved Weapons (magic)
LOGISTICS
Speed 2
Leader Adimarus Ionacu (Morale +2; Adimarus' forces gain +1 OM and damage against armies comprised of non-shapechanger humans)

Feldgrau Skeletons CR 4
Large army of undead (skeletal champions)
COMBAT
hp 16; DV 14; OM 4 (range 1)
Tactics Defensive Wall ( –2 OM, +2 DV; always active and already figured in above); Resources Ranged Weapons, Shields (+2 DV against ranged attacks)
LOGISTICS
Speed 2
Leader Akya-Nor*, Dread Wight Monk (Morale +3; Akya-Nor’s army reduces both the DV and OM of an opposing army by 1 on the first successful attack it makes against that army in battle)

* I have reflavored Acretia as a Jalmeri monk to play off one of my PCs, who is herself a Jalmeri monk and worshiper of Irori.

Feldgrau Zombies CR 1
Small army of undead (fast zombies)
COMBAT
hp 4; DV 11; OM 1
Tactics Close Quarters (army gains +2 DV when in narrow terrain, such as gaps of 80 feet or less in width)
LOGISTICS
Speed 3
Leader Siobhan, Child of Urgathoa (Morale +1; Siobhan can magically bolster zombies once per battle, restoring 1 hp to her army and raising their DV by 1 for the rest of the battle)

Guardian Festrogs CR 1
Tiny army of undead (festrogs)
COMBAT
hp 4; DV 11; OM 1
Tactics Relentless Brutality (+4 OM, –4 DV)
LOGISTICS
Speed 2
Leader Molochi, Priest of Orcus (Morale +2; Molochi can create new festrogs once per combat, restoring 1 hp to his army and raising its Morale by an additional +1)

Just saw a Facebook update from Free RPG Day announcing this. Can't wait to play/run it!

Paizo, anything else you can tell us at this point? Will Richard Pett be responsible for the atrocities this go-round as well?

Here's a little something for all you GMs prepping holiday-themed games this week... ;D

Krampus - CR 15
A terrifying hairy humanoid with curved horns, clawed hands, and cloven feet dressed in tattered clothing stands before you. A great black bag, its contents squirming and squalling, is slung over his back, and he holds a gnarled walking stick of birchwood rimed with frost. His serpentine tongue snakes out between wickedly pointed fangs as he locks eyes with you.
XP 51,200
NE Medium fey
Init +4; Senses low-light vision; Perception +17
Defense
AC 30, touch 14, flat-footed 25 (+4 Dex, +15 natural, +1 shield)
hp 215 (25d6+125)
Fort +13, Ref +18, Will +18
DR 10/cold iron or good; Immune cold; SR 26
Offense
Speed 35 ft.
Melee +3 icy burst quarterstaff +22/+22/+17/+17 (1d6+11 and 1d6 cold), or 2 claws +20 (1d6+8) and gore +20 (1d8+8)
Special Attack spellstrike
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 13, concentration +17)
At will—dimension door, frost fall (DC 16), healing thief, shadow anchor (DC 16)
3/day—gloomblind bolts (DC 17)
Statistics
Str 26, Dex 18, Con 20, Int 10, Wis 18, Cha 18
Base Atk +12; CMB +20; CMD 47
Feats Combat Reflexes, Critical Focus, Dazzling Display (quarterstaff), Defensive Combat Training, Double Slice, Fleet, Improved Two Weapon Fighting, Shatter Defenses (quarterstaff), Toughness, Two Weapon Defense, Two Weapon Fighting, Two Weapon Rend, Weapon Focus (quarterstaff)
Skills Acrobatics +17, Bluff +17, Climb +21, Craft (traps) +13, Diplomacy +17, Disguise +17, Escape Artist +17, Knowledge (geography) +13, Knowledge (local) +13, Knowledge (nature) +13, Perception +17, Sense Motive +17, Sleight of Hand +17, Stealth +17, Use Magic Device +17
Languages Common, Sylvan
Ecology
Environment cold mountains or cold urban
Organization solitary
Treasure standard (+3 icy burst quarterstaff, sack of Krampus – see below)
Special Abilities
Sack of Krampus (Su) Krampus possesses a black sack that functions as a type IV bag of holding equipped with an invisible bottle of air to keep naughty children alive and fresh for cooking and eating.
Spellstrike (Su) Whenever Krampus uses a spell-like ability with a range of touch, he can deliver the spell through his quarterstaff as part of a melee attack. Instead of the free melee touch attack normally allowed to deliver the spell effect, Krampus can make one free melee attack with his quarterstaff at +24 as part of activating the ability. If successful, this melee attack deals its normal damage as well as the effects of the spell.

All know that the Yulefather possesses a magical list which records the names of every little boy and girl in the world, denoting whether they are Naughty or Nice, with a capital N. Nice children awaken on Midwinter's Day to find their stockings stuffed full of candied fruits and presents under the Yule tree bearing their names.

What is seldom mentioned, though, is what happens to the kids on the Naughty list: they get a visit from Krampus. Some children who have only mildly misbehaved may find that Krampus has left coal or kindling in their stockings; others vanish in the night, never to be seen again.

Krampus vaguely resembles an extremely hirsute human with a wild, oily beard and large goat horns on his head. His tongue is long and pointed, and his feet sport cloven hooves. He always carries a magical quarterstaff cut from a gnarled birch tree. He dresses himself in muddy breeches and a dingy patchwork coat, and carries a grubby black sack on his back, which he uses to carry away the especially naughty children back to his secret cave high atop a snowy mountain. Krampus cooks and eats the meanest child for his Midwinter's Eve dinner in front of the other brats, then turns the rest out into the cold to make their way home as best they can with only a lump of coal and a bundle of birch sticks.

Krampus has many special abilities to help him elude any adventurers who might try to put an end to his villainy. His favorite trick is his ability to cast dimension door at will; he uses this to reposition himself for advantage and escape, as well as to snatch his victims from their beds.

Want more holiday-themed monsters for your game? Check out Book of Beasts: War On Yuletide from Jon Brazer Enterprises!

Over the weekend, our group made level 20, mythic tier 10 PCs and ran the characters against high-CR monsters (we took turns running different monsters while also running our own PCs).

Party members:

Barbarian 20/Champion 10
Sorcerer 20/Archmage 10
Witch 10/Fighter 1/Eldritch Knight 9/Archmage 10
Oracle 20/Guardian 10

Fight 1: Tarrasque (CR 25)

A warm-up that immediately showcased some problems with mythic rules. The barbarian wiped about half the tarrasque's hp with one attack, while the sorcerer used mythic time stop to queue up 5 delayed blast fireballs that finished the beast off nicely. He then wished it dead and we moved on. The tarrasque fell in one round of play, effectively.

Fight 2: Malcanthet (CR 28) [from Dungeon 149, I believe]

Lonely Mal was so far down in the initiative chain that she never really had a chance to do much. She wounded the barbarian pretty badly with a full attack, but since her abilities weren't mythic in origin, no one had to save against them. The oracle also used holy aura to screen out mind-affecting effects, which nullified a lot of her efficacy.

Fight 3: Orcus (CR 32) and Demogorgon (CR 33) [from Dungeon 149 and 150, respectively]

Finally something more closely resembling a true challenge. Orcus summoned a marilith and Demogorgon brought in a balor, which made us have to spread out our resources more. The sorcerer used his capstone ability to smash the balor and bury him under rubble. The barbarian took out the marilith in about two rounds. The eldritch knight stood at a distance and used Arcane Blast and Spring Attack to get in digs as possible at the heavy hitters while the oracle was on healing duty. The barbarian DID drop during this fight (going toe to toe with Orcus is never a good idea!), at which point the sorcerer cast his ridonkulous 20-hour time stop and the oracle and eldritch knight used breath of life and heal to get the barbarian back up and running. This fight ran long, and we were really tired by this point in the combat, so we called it a night - but we did some number crunching and estimated that although we'd expend a lot of resources to do so, we still had enough juice in us to polish off Orcus within two or three rounds and then chew Demogorgon to bits after another time stop rest.

Our Thoughts:

Mythic time stop is broken beyond belief. The design folks probably know this by now, but it bears repeating.

Mythic saves definitely need some rethinking, too - a lot of the oomph and flavor in these high-CR monsters is their special abilities, and those are effectively nullified by mythic saves. We're going to circumvent this by adding simple mythic templates to high-CR creatures (Graz'zt is likely to be next on the list, and we did finally get ahold of a copy of James Jacobs' CR 32 build for use in playtesting.)

From a personal standpoint, the archmage path seems less than ideal for anything that isn't wizard or sorcerer. My witch-based eldritch knight had very few spells he could use from the given list of mythic spell options, and the oracle could generally do those better. Mage strike was useful when I could get a hit in, however. Archmage seems very much geared toward a nuke mage build, which the witch just isn't. Some options for making hexes more effective or fun would be greatly welcomed in the final book. The barbarian-champion is highly effective, though, and nuke archmages work just fine.

For our next round of playtesting, I'll be switching my eldritch knight to the marshal path. It makes way more sense for me to continue acting as an artillery and mobile melee unit while granting additional actions to allies (I'm the party leader in-game anyway, so this makes more sense thematically as well). The sorcerer is going to try trickster because he's disillusioned with how easy the archmage's mythic time stop makes everything for us. The oracle is going to switch over to hierophant for the additional boost to healing. The barbarian build isn't likely to change, though there was some discussion of him going dual-path and taking abilities from both champion and guardian to boost his defense - his AC is pretty low, and he is soaking a lot of damage from being on the front line of every skirmish. That plus the addition of a hierophant should make us more resilient.

More to come once we all have another day to get together and hash out some battles. If I can add any more detail to these reports to boost their helpfulness, please let me know.

Words fail me.

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva/tlg/3310486791.html

Recently, a discussion in the Ask James Jacobs thread seemed to indicate that a significant portion of the Paizo staff and the audience here are not fond of CBS's The Big Bang Theory. Some folks, including James, said they found it downright offensive.

I'm curious as to why. While I readily admit that the writing is no better than any other sitcom and the show does tend to stereotype intelligent people unfairly, I still get a couple of good belly laughs out of each episode.

I gather that, if one believes that Sheldon actually does have some sort of autism-spectrum disorder, people may be uncomfortable with that, and the jokes about Indian and Jewish culture with regard to Raj and Howard may rub some people the wrong way. (I'm not that sensitive to such humor, so I don't sympathize, but I can see how others might.)

So, what's everyone's take? Do you like the show or hate it? And if you're someone who's offended by it, why do you feel that way?

(Mods: The messageboard path in my browser looks wonky, and the first time I tried to add a new thread under TV, it wanted to reply to an Ask JJ post I had just read for some reason. So if you end up having to move this post, my apologies in advance.)

Just a quick heads-up to any RPG players in the Raleigh NC area: Raleigh Tabletop RPGs will be holding its 2nd annual Tales of the Crimson Boar event at the Gamer's Armory in Cary NC on Saturday, July 14th, 2012.

The Crimson Boar Inn, a shared setting for swords and sorcery gaming, is the result of a collaborative effort by game masters, players, designers, and writers who are members of Raleigh Tabletop RPGs. Everything about this setting, from the map and layout to the characters you will encounter in your time spent there, was conceptualized by RTR members as part of a massive crowd sourcing project in 2011.

We will run 12 tables across two sessions - one in the afternoon, and one in the evening. Featured systems include Pathfinder, D&D 3.5, D&D 4E, Castles & Crusades, Fiasco, 7th Sea, King Arthur Pendragon, Feng Shui, and Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.

We're also giving out door prizes, including rulebooks, adventures, handknit dice bags, dice sets, and more!

This is a great opportunity to try out new games and meet other gamers with similar interests. We'd love to see some attendance from new people, and we still have plenty of slots left for players! We're also looking for one or two backup GMs to run games in case a table is canceled before the event.

For more details, visit the following website...

http://www.meetup.com/Raleigh-Tabletop-Roleplayers/events/54062462/

...and sign up to be a member of RTR's Meetup to RSVP for the event!

Call me paranoid, but it seems highly unlikely that both of these things should just happen to occur on the same day. I'm glad to hear that we get to playtest the new game soon - but I can't help but wonder if this is a reaction to help smooth over any fanbase trepidation caused by Monte's departure.

EDIT: Anyway, I figured both of these pieces of news needed their own thread so as not to hijack other civil and stimulating 4E-related discussions, so here it is.

His (Her?) comment in the Ask JJ thread reminded me of something I placed in a game a few years ago. This is rough copy, of course, and may not be properly formatted, though I'd love to give it a dust-off for kicks.

New Magic Weapon Special Ability: Lifelance: If the wielder of a lifelance weapon has at least 90% of his maximum hit points, he can fire a beam of force from the weapon at any one target within 60’. This is a standard action that provokes an attack of opportunity from adjacent enemies. The weapon's wielder must succeed on a ranged touch attack, adding the enhancement bonus of the sword to the attack roll; if the attack hits, the beam deals 1d6 points of force damage plus the enhancement bonus of the weapon.

Some myths hold that if a wielder of a lifelance weapon proves himself a great hero in the eyes of a fey, he may be permitted to baptize the weapon in one of their mystic springs; it then becomes a greater lifelance weapon. Greater lifelance weapons’ beams deal 1d8 points of force damage plus the weapon’s enhancement bonus, and this ability can be used so long as the wielder retains 80% of his total hit points.

Moderate evocation; CL 10th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Arcane Blast, magic missile; Price +1 lifelance; +2 greater lifelance.

Our FLGS is trying to get GMs to commit to running some of the products they'll be receiving for Free RPG Day, and I'm leaning toward picking this one. I was hoping someone in the know could tell me what I'm getting myself into, though. =]

How hard will this adventure be to run dry without prep time? Does the module contain pregenerated PCs, or should I have some ready? If so, what experience level would be most appropriate? [EDIT: Never mind; I see on the JBE site that it's supposed to be for a group of 5th level PCs.] And how experienced should the *players* be? We typically get good turnout from younger RPG enthusiasts, and the last thing I want to do is to make a grade schooler cry on Free RPG Day!

Thanks in advance.

I'm working on a story hook for my Carrion Crown game that will help me work Tomb of the Iron Medusa in between parts 5 and 6 of Carrion Crown. My current idea was to...

However, some of the language about Taldor that I find in the wiki and in TotIM are confusing me (I haven't checked the Inner Sea World Guide yet, as I'm away from my book collection at the moment). The history of Marcus Junius Adella given in the module says that he rescued the emperor of Taldor's son at the Battle of Istavala. Should this reference to an emperor actually be read as a reference to the Taldan Grand Prince of the Shining Crusade-era? Or did imperial rule give way to a new government order that appointed Grand Princes after the fact?

Essentially, I'm trying to figure out if...

Thanks in advance for any advice!

I'm pretty much to the point where in order to enjoy 4E as much as I want to, I may need to do some kit-bashing.

Problem is, there aren't very many guidelines I can find for how to create well-balanced powers, and such a feature hasn't been built into any of the available 4E character builders of which I am aware.

Has anyone ever done the math and found a ballpark set of formulas for designing your own 4E powers?

Howdy all,

We're about to relaunch a campaign with a new player who really wants to play a swashbuckler from Tome of Secrets. Has anyone developed a reasonably-bug free Hero Lab data set for ToS? Having these classes integrated into our builder would go a long toward helping us, especially since we already have a player running a warlord in another game. Thanks in advance for any tips you can throw my way!

Reaching out to the biggest group of people I know in hopes that someone here has had this same problem and can help me resolve it, because office tech support is zero help on this (their solution is a reformat, which I refuse to believe is necessary at this point).

About two weeks ago I picked up a Trojan. Although I managed to isolate it and keep it from locking me out of my programs (it's one of those scareware scams that tries to make you think it's a virus shield that costs $60 and blocks Windows from running anything), there are still traces of it showing up. MSE has flagged numerous processes this morning and claims to have "cleaned" them, but evidently it isn't completely removing the issue because alerts keep popping up.

I get two to three BSoDs a day as a result of this process, and I'm also getting tabs opening up in Firefox about every 30 minutes with "You Won Our Crappy Contest!" and "Work For Google From Home" ad scams targeted to my locale.

Additional weirdness: I can't update my definitions for MSE or MalwareBytes, and I suspect that the rogue process is deliberately blocking those updates being applied. Has anybody else had this issue? It seems to be tied to the Alureon trojan, if that helps.

I've also followed several Alureon removal guides on eHow and other sites that detail which processes to shut down and keys to remove via regedit, but none of those processes or keys appeared on my machine. >=[

So I ran my first session on 9/30/11. It was... interesting.

First, our cast of heroes and ne'er do wells:

Nivia, female halfling rogue: An "acquisitions expert" who previously worked for Professor Lorrimor acquiring exotic goods. She has been deliberately close-mouthed about her past thus far, but she is clearly spirited, talented, and lucky.

Rya Trumblepot, female gnome summoner: A native of Kyonin who spent the last few years with a traveling circus, where she met George. She remembers the professor as a lecturer from her magecraft school with whom she corresponded frequently over the years. Her eidolon, Fidget, resembles a small kirin mixed with features of a mist dragon.

George, male half-orc barbarian: Kind and simple-minded, George was born on the border between Ustalav and the Hold of Belkzen and raised by his human mother. After her passing, he joined a traveling circus doing manual labor and occasionally guest-starring in their act as a strongman. He saved Petros Lorrimor's life when he fended off a pursuing group of wounded trolls a few years ago.

Arddun Benedict, female human investigator (rogue): Arddun hasn't disclosed her relationship to the Professor, but it's obvious she was on the payroll for some reason - she's the only party member Kendra has never heard about from her father. A native of Absalom, Arddun is brusque and unladylike, which has initially caused Kendra Lorrimor to balk at Arddun's presence.

Evan Nimblefoot: The son of Chelaxian slaves, Evan's uncle Arv called in a favor from the Professor to help free Evan from captivity when he was a youth, where he first manifested the favor of Sarenrae. Evan is stern and honest, and his adherence to protocol and sense of honesty have not exactly endeared him to his companions thus far, but he has earned the trust of many people in Ravengro.

Anya Petulovich: A wanderer, dancer, and actor from Varisia, Anya is constantly fidgeting with her mother's Harrow deck and loves to amp up the drama when conversing with others. Though she is seven years younger than the professor's daughter, Anya and Kendra knew each other as children, for Professor Lorrimor often contacted Anya's mother with questions about divination and folk magic.

Most of the adventurers decided to arrive in Ravengro on the evening before the funeral, with the exception of Arddun, who stayed across Lake Lias in a boarding house and arrived the next morning. I played up Kendra as the overnurturing host - having taken care of her father for years, she was going to the utmost extremes to show the same courtesy to her guests with an overabundance of food carried in from the Laughing Demon. George was happy to help finish off the leftovers.

Arddun made her appearance to the group at the entrance to the Restlands before the funeral, dropping from a nearby apple tree as Kendra and the PCs were coming to meet the undertakers. She immediately eyed George and began to flirt with him licentiously, and her casual disregard for manners, given the situation, soured Kendra's first impression of Arddun. They have interacted minimally since.

Evan was able to talk down the mob in the Restlands and avoid further confrontation; four of the PCs spoke at the funeral, and Evan offered a prayer to Sarenrae in his rememberance (with Father Grimburrow's prior permission). This earned them a considerable amount of Trust right off the bat.

For the reading of the will, I threw on my best Peter Lorre accent and changed one little detail: I had Kendra produce a perfectly square sealed envelope with a flat, shiny black disc made from an unknown material and covered in circular grooves, and place it onto a machine that looked like a box with knobs and buttons, a bugle-shaped ivory horn protruding from the side, and a similarly sized metal disc and suspended arm on top. She dropped an alchemical compound into a hole on the side of the box where gears were suspended in a clear, viscous liquid, and the compound reacted with the liquid, making the gears turn and causing the metal disc on top to spin. The professor's voice began to emanate from the ivory horn as the arm scraped across the surface of the grooved black disc.

After the reading, Anya and Evan began to pour through the contents of the box, perusing the journal and examining the books. Evan mentioned in passing that he should probably destroy the unholy books of Urgathoa and Zon Kuthon, but refrained from doing so in accordance with the professor's last wishes. Evan and Kendra spent the rest of the evening researching the Whispering Way, uncovering the DC 25 Knowledge in the wee hours of the morning.

The next day, Evan, Anya, Arddun, and Nivia headed into the village to run some errands for Kendra; Evan said he wanted to talk to Father Grimburrow and secure permission to search the Restlands for the weapons cache the professor mentioned in his journal, as well as request access to the church's records. On the way, they ran into the little girls skipping rope and heard the rhyme about the five prisoners; Evan and Anya befriended the girls and gained some Trust points in the process (Evan's diminutive stature and good Diplomacy rolls charmed the children, and Anya taught them some Varisian dance moves).

As Evan entered the Church of Pharasma, the three Chaotic Good characters with him smiled politely, promised not to disturb the graves before Evan consulted with the priest, and then of course promptly headed directly to the crypt indicated in the journal. After getting accosted by the centipedes and forcing open the doors into the inner crypt, the three women filled their pockets and bags with the magic treasure in the cache.

Unfortunately, Evan had returned in time to catch them in the act, suspecting they might act on their own, and without consulting them, he went directly back to the Church of Pharasma and reported that graverobbers were plundering the false crypt. The friar and seven acolytes accompanied Evan to the Restlands and accosted the other PCs, using detect magic to ferret out the objects and retrieve them, although all the mundane equipment was safely secreted in Nivia's ever-burgeoning pockets and (GM fiat) the sturdily-constructed darkwood box prevented the clerics from detecting the items inside of it. The more free-spirited PCs were quite irritated with their law-abiding cleric companion, and a rather frank discussion of ethics is sure to follow in our next session.

The remainder of the game concentrated on George and Rya back at Kendra's house. Rya remained at the house for much of the day, being most interested in the Lorrimors' doorbell (an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine powered by cantrips and odd machinery) George had gone into town with Kendra early in the day and saved her from a marauding zombie that crawled from an alleyway, impressing some of the deputy sheriffs and earning a Trust point. When they returned to the Lorrimor estate, Rya took George out to the well to clean the gore off his arms and greatclub - and while they were washing up, three riders on black horses charged into Kendra's yard. Two of the riders were masked men wearing black capes and scale mail; the third was a sinister yet beautiful woman with jet black hair, pale skin, strange patterns of purple makeup across her left eye and cheek, and an elaborate black dress with a plunging neckline and high slits up the thighs. (I used generic thugs and an adept from the GMG; I could tell these two players were itching for a fight and wanted them to see some good action before we wrapped up for the night.)

The sorceress demanded that Kendra Lorrimor surrender the purple book with the gold scarab, and George and Rya retorted with greatclub and eidolon. The guards rolled very poorly and were quickly dispatched, though one attempted to escape on horseback until Rya slapped him with an enlarge person spell. The mage got off a few spells, singing her allies and the two heroes with a burning hands, but she was knocked unconscious by Fidget, and they plan to keep her captive and question her later.

Next session is Friday, 10/14/11. Can't wait to see what they do next... the fit is about to hit the shan with the villagers just now discovering the vandalism at the monument to Lyran Hawkran. More to come!

Shot in the dark here, because I'm pressed for time: Has anyone made a printable version of Lorrimor's will or journal entries that I could use for my Harrowstone game? We're starting tomorrow night, and work deadlines have left me short on prep time. Thanks in advance!

Is there a comprehensive guide somewhere that details how to update creatures from the first two 4E Monster Manuals to comply with the standards of those found in the Monster Vaults and MMIII? I've been collecting Logan Bonner's updates from the official site as he mows through them, but I'd like to do some on my own that I suspect won't be given a complete overhaul in the long run. Thanks!

Anyone pick this up yet or run it for their home group? I've read a few reviews with some promising info in them, but I'm primarily concerned with how hard it will be to reskin it for use in my homebrew setting.

I've racked up quite a few systems and sourcebooks over the last year, and of course I want to run them all... someday. Finding the time and willpower to do it, though, is another issue entirely. I figured I'd throw up my laundry list of games to run in the near (and not-so-near) future. Feel free to do the same - maybe feedback and overlap will prod some of us to run some games we've been putting on the back burner for too long now!

New World of Darkness: I'm primarily interested in the "mortals" aspect of this system. I'll be running it for the first time around Halloween for a local mini-con focusing on B-movie horror and sci-fi riffs, using nWoD as the basis for my homage to 80s slasher films. If it goes well, I'm thinking of starting up a campaign for mortal PCs using Urban Legends and Ghost Stories.

Dresden Files: The 800-pound gorilla on my gaming shelf. Two HUGE books of material with very oblique rules for character creation and running games, which I know from experience to be fun to play even if I don't understand it that well yet. Plus, almost all of my gamer friends have read the novels and we're dying to play around in Harry's world.

4th Edition D&D: Encounters has lost a lot of its charm for me, and Lair Assault is just too focused on optimization for my tastes; actually, the most fun I've had so far with 4E is running Scott Betts' conversion of the Thistletop dungeons from Burnt Offerings. I really want to dive more into this system and see what I can do with it in terms of epic storytelling. Ultimately, I'm hoping to adapt it to my own homebrew campaign setting, but I'm going to have to houserule a lot of stuff to make it work properly for my needs (such as banning eladrin and dragonborn as PC races, because the flavor is completely off). I've got the Tomb of Horrors mega adventure and a fan conversion of the original, and I intend to use those as centerpieces for the campaign and fill in the gaps around it with scenarios of my own design.

Castles & Crusades: My home Pathfinder game has devolved into a cold war between players and GM, it seems - no matter who's running it. I'm tired of having to crunch numbers like a friggin' accountant to build meaningful high level encounters. I want rules-light, old school fantasy action as my primary system of choice, and C&C is (hopefully) the solution to this problem. Once the current Pathfinder-driven story arc of my home campaign is completed, I'm switching the entire shebang to C&C for my own sanity's sake. The only exception to this will probably be my 4E experiment, as noted above.

Star Wars: I ran the d20 game (RCR, not Saga Edition) for two years straight in college, and had a blast doing it... but my last foray into it after that campaign was a disaster. No one's character concepts really jived - everybody had different personal goals, so getting PCs to cooperate meaningfully was fruitless. I'm hoping to revive interest by having my players make characters that are Imperial operatives... and then sending them on a mission to assassinate a loyalist senator in the wake of the Empire's rise. The name of the scenario: "Kill Jar Jar". (And I may use d6 rules this time, just to shake things up.)

And then there's the games I intend to run once I overcome my d20 fatigue:

Monte Cook's World of Darkness: I really like this system for its treatment of magic and the way it balances different types of supernatural character types for mixed play. The world Cook devised to set this system in is compelling but still lends itself well to modular alteration to fit the individual campaign's tone and aesthetics.

Eberron: I've gotten a LOT of Eberron stuff on the cheap over the last few months via Paizo, Amazon, and secondhand bookstores (Five Nations for $4.00? Eyes of the Lich Queen for $12.50? Official character sheets for $2.00? Campaign on!) I admit that the setting is very kitchen sink-y and can be an absolute mess if run haphazardly, but I'm enjoying a lot of what I'm reading in these books - and it doesn't hurt that a lot of the RPG writers I admire cut their teeth on this product line, too. Probably going to set this game in Stormreach, with occasional dips into other locations around Eberron, since my home group played DDO pretty extensively and knows the "feel" of Stormreach very well as a result.

Kingmaker: I loved the theme of this AP when it debuted, and bought the entire thing at my FLGS... but there's no way I'm going to attempt to run this until I've finished up Carrion Crown, which I probably won't wrap up until at least next summer.

...

Richard Marx? Really?

My players just drew Cthulhu into Wonderland. Settle this argument. Majority of responses wins. Go.

I intend to run "The Haunting of Harrowstone" for a group of gamers in about a month and a half. The players are a nearly-even mix of experienced PFRPG players and total newbies. The idea is that each chapter of Carrion Crown will be run as a mini-campaign with six PCs at a time, and at the end of each chapter, players can drop out and skip a chapter or two, giving other interested players a chance to join in (our group has about 100 active members and I have at least a dozen who are expressly interested in Carrion Crown, so rotation will likely be heavy between AP chapters with one or two mainstay players playing through the whole campaign).

To combat power creep and min/maxing by the more experienced players, I'm strongly considering having them do a 10-point buy for their characters. Is this going to leave the group at too much of a disadvantage? I want them to feel somewhat fragile - as is appropriate for a horror game, IMO - but I know they'll get frustrated if they have too much of a glass jaw.

Also, I'd like to incorporate Sean K. Reynolds' step-advancement system in lieu of traditional XP tracking - largely because I almost always run into problems with people not recording their XP, and this system gives me an easy way of keeping track: "Well, we've played this many encounters, so you should have this many steps if you attended all the sessions so far." Is one "step" per encounter (role-playing or combat) a good rule of thumb for rate of advancement?

Finally, there's a good deal of interest in steampunk among these gamers. I've heard that Ultimate Combat offers some great guidelines on working guns into the game without actually allowing the gunslinger class - but is other steampunk-style tech well-represented in the book? If so, I'd like to introduce it immediately into "Harrowstone". A few of the items in Legendary Games' first release also caught my eye - can anyone offer an estimation of how useful that supplement would be for adding steampunk flavor?

(I dunno how I'm gonna justify steampunk in Golarion, but I was thinking that maybe some Ustalavian adventurers penetrated the Red Redoubt of Karamoss and are now flooding the market with scrounged tech.)

Thanks in advance for your help!

This Wednesday marks the last week of the "Dark Legacy of Evard" story line for D&D Encounters, and I have a problem.

Prior to my assuming DM duties for this event, another DM who caused a lot of problems that I won't enumerate here (suffice it to say he was banned from the event) delayed the progression of the sessions by re-running games every time new players came aboard, and just generally not getting through scenarios on time.

As a result of this setback, I NEED to wrap up "Evard" this week in order to get the ball rolling for "Lost Crown of Neverwinter" next week. Unfortunately, to do it "by the book" I will have to cram four encounters into one night of play (Sessions 10-13).

Are any other 4E players here running Encounters and familiar with "Evard", or have experience with scaling back adventures to run in a shorter time frame? I can do up to three hours of play. I was considering stripping out one of the fights (either session 10 or 11) and using higher-level minions in place of the monsters given to speed up play. In past sessions, to gain ground due to time lost, I have halved the hp of monsters and added 2 or 3 points to the damage that their powers deal to balance that out - it makes play move faster without players feel like they're fighting pushovers.

Anybody else got any suggestions?

I thought the "new" AE products were usually released relatively early on the last Friday of the month. Has there been a substantial delay on the new batch, or is it just an "end of day" project no one's gotten to yet?

I'm an organizer for a fairly large group of RPGers in my area, and we were approached some time back by WotC with a request to spearhead a new Encounters program at a relatively new FLGS. We agreed and are about six weeks into it now.

The problem I'm running into as a DM is, what is actually necessary for reporting? Finding guidelines for it on WotC's website is next to impossible, there's no FAQ or forum posts, and there are three or four different sheets that look like they need to be filled out for tracking.

The store owners have told us that all we need to do is reward Renown and mark it on the big poster, and then fill out the sheet that has spaces for everyone's DCI number. Is this correct?

(As an aside, this is why I generally dislike organized play and haven't gone to a Pathfinder Society session yet - in my experience, the biggest pain in the butt of the entire process is reporting, no matter how fun the actual game is, because it's done at the end of the session when everyone is ready to go home. You'd think they'd make this as easy as possible to actually get people into the seats.)

I've been seeking a rules-lite alternative to Pathfinder and D&D 4th Edition for my home game for a while now. I still love Pathfinder, but the type of game I run is getting far too complicated and requiring more prep time than I have on a weekly basis. I enjoy 4E as both a player and a GM, but I need something a bit more flexible for my flavor needs at the moment.

Awhile back I attempted to begin designing my own system that used a unified mechanic based on the six primary ability scores to resolve nearly all actions. I dropped the idea because it would have been far too much work to design a system from the ground up, but in reading about Castles & Crusades, I find that many of the things I intended to incorporate into my homebrew game system have already been done in C&C.

I've bought digest copies of the C&C PHB and Monsters & Treasures, and ma anxiously awaiting their arrival. But I'd like to hear some feedback - be it good or bad - from other GMs who have tried C&C. Did you go to the system seeking something easier to prep and run than OGL-based systems? Did it do what you wanted it to do? What did you like or dislike about the system? Is converting material from AD&D 1E/2E and D&D3.X really as easy and compatible as their marketing material claims?

One of the great things about living in the Triangle area of North Carolina is the burgeoning number of game stores that service the area. One of the newer ones, The Gamer's Armory in Cary, has been kind enough to partner with Raleigh Tabletop Roleplayers and act as host for several events. This Wednesday was my first visit to the store, and I always like to drop a little cash on each game store visit to give the local businesses support. With my monthly dose of Pathfinder horror sated by picking up "Wake of the Watcher" at GameTheory, I decided to try out the latest monster collection from the Wizards crew.

"Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale" is a pretty solid book. While a casual glance at the contents may lead you into believing it's light on crunch and heavy on fluff, this isn't entirely the case. Although only about 40 different entries are listed in the table of contents, most of those entries include multiple stat blocks for new opponents to use in a 4E game - as many as eight or more in some cases, like the goblinoid tribe with multiple builds for goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears.

Many of the entries reference monsters and villains featured in other 4E products, with suggestions on working them into your game even if the featured villains were already encountered and killed in your campaign. Additionally, each monster entry offers well-written back story content that fits in with the Nentir Vale setting, but is very easily re-skinned to suit any campaign setting you use. As a GM who prefers his homebrew world to most published settings, this was perhaps my biggest reservation about buying the product - what if I can't use them in my game? My fears were unfounded, as it turns out, and I've seen plenty of things I want to re-purpose for my own game. I'm already pondering how to work in the party of undead adventurers when I get a chance to run 4E again, and I'm also jazzed about Calastryx, the three-headed red dragon.

The book itself contains lots of "faction"-type monster stats, including bloodthirsty bandits, demoniac gnolls, orc and goblin tribes, street gangs, druidic orders, the aforementioned undead adventuring party, and a family of assassins which would work great as running mook encounters for when a campaign is getting slow. But there's also plenty of nasty and inhuman things, too - a giant mimic which takes the form of a spooky tower, a drow werespider who leads a group of slavers, abyssal plague demons that have invaded the world from another reality in which the Abyss is all that remains of the planes, dragons of several breeds with unique personality quirks, a mythical reptilian monster that prowls the forests and preys on passersby, a reworking of the cadaver collector from the 3.5 Monster Manual III, and the mooncow, a flying alien horror that could have been lifted right out of Lovecraft which I eagerly await springing on my players someday.

I'm not a huge fan of the counters, but I do use them when I run games away from home to save myself the trouble of lugging along miniatures, and the custom-made counters for each monster featured in the book are well-rendered and of the same quality as those found in the first Monster Vault. I haven't cracked open the cellophane on these yet (I'm working out a better organizational system for the ones I already have before making the slush pile even bigger), but it looks like I'll get plenty of use out of them in due time.

The only drawback I see to the new Monster Vault product is the sticker price. $35.00 is a lot of money for a softcover book with a few sheets of counters with no major production cost beyond printing and the money needed to license the art. Luckily for me, Gamer's Armory sells most of their stock about 10% below MSRP, so I got a better than average deal on it, but I think some gamers will look at it side by side with the earlier 4E Monster Manuals and wonder whether their dollars aren't better spent on an older monster product (especially when they're pretty affordable on the secondary market).

Despite that observation, though, I don't regret the purchase. Rarely do published products offer me good quality content that fits in easily with my own world concept without extensive re-skinning and dithering to make it match my own mythology AND is fun to run and play. MV:TttNV is chock full of both.

http://youtu.be/UUQYrdgIJuI

Dear talking head TV station morons in Charlotte:

1) Portal 2 has never billed itself as educational;

2) Sony asking you to pass your concerns on to the developer of the title is NOT "passing the buck";

3) You're morons;

4) Nobody has the right to be completely unoffended by every piece of media they consume;

and finally

5) I'm so glad I am from Raleigh (or at least, I will be until WRAL decides to jump on the video game bashing bandwagon - sadly, our anchors here are just as supportive of sterile and inoffensive nanny state-grade entertainment as they are there, unfortunately).

Yesterday I joined the GiantITP forums (the website where Rich Burlew's Order of the Stick is hosted) to post a message seeking information about the shipping date for the new OotS collection which features his comics from Dragon magazine. I needed info because I am about to relocate and was afraid that if the release of the book was delayed, it might get sent to the wrong address - but if I changed my info now, it would ship to my future residence, and I'd hate for the current occupants to be like, "What's this crap? A stick figure comic? Toss it in the garbage, honey." SADFACE.

Now, I will grant you that I probably should have emailed customer service at Ookoodook right off the bat - I think the Paizo message boards have spoiled me though, because their staff is so good about addressing customer questions in the forums. I also wondered if perhaps the book had already shipped and another person who had pre-ordered could have given me some reassurance, thus saving me the trouble of inconveniencing a customer service rep at the publishing company.

Almost immediately, my message was assaulted by another poster who addressed me in an accusatory fashion, asking why I didn't post in the stickied thread for the product discussion and furthermore why I was on the boards talking about it when I could just contact Ookoodook. I was apologetic in my response, which only seemed to further his irritation.

At that point, I pretty much gave up on the GITP message boards as a source of information. I emailed Ookoodook/APE and got a very helpful response from their representative, who told me how to handle the shipping address problem and also mentioned that the ship date for the book had been pushed back to late May.

In the thread that I had started on GITP, another poster had requested that I pass on any information I discovered in the stickied discussion thread. I returned to the GITP forums to do so, but the stickied thread had been closed by a moderator - so I posted the information in the thread I created.

Almost immediately thereafter, my thread was also locked.

Call me oversensitive, but if the publisher is willing to tell a customer what the prospective ship date for a product is, why is discussion of the same topic being systematically shut down by mods on the creator's website? I've long since given up on Rich Burlew doing anything in a timely fashion - the waiting is always the hardest part of being an OotS fan, and I accept that. But this seems like a very simple thing to inform your customers of - particularly when they're prepaid months in advance for a product that is being delayed.

So: Hostile forum environment with a ton of posting rules, bad communication with fans, capricious locking of discussion threads containing information that's readily available from the publisher - I think the GITP people could stand to hang around on the Paizo forums and learn a lesson or two from the awesome staff and friendly community we have here. As it is, I'm not sure I ever want to go back there. And GITP, you're producing a webcomic - it's not like you're Boeing or Lockheed Martin making top secret missiles and jet fighters here. Would it kill you to be upfront with your customers about product delays? You might save yourselves some ill will from your forum posters with a little more transparency, especially considering that the people who pre-ordered the book are bankrolling your initial print run.

End rant.

We've been suffering from some system fatigue of late, so for a change of pace, we decided to convert our Pathfinder characters for the ongoing RotRL game to 4th Edition analogues and use Scott Betts' conversion material to run through Thistletop. An awesome time was had by all, and we intend to keep with 4E through the end of Skinsaw Murders, at which point we will probably convert back to PF (we're round-robining each of the six books, and the other GMs are more comfortable working with the PF ruleset for the time being).

Excellent work, sir. I much enjoyed thrashing my players with Warchief Ripnugget. =]

I've sort of held my tongue about this for a while now, but I gotta get it out:

It's very cool of James Jacobs to respond to fans in not just one, but two message board threads. Frankly, I'm sort of surprised he hasn't tired of dancing about like a performing monkey after 170+ pages of questions, and I really appreciate his efforts to reach out to the community.

Having said that, I see a disturbing trend occurring in the Ask Merisiel thread with people being deliberately pervy and harping on queries of an overtly sexual nature in post after post. I'm concerned for two reasons:

1) Just ew. Look, James, no offense, but I've seen pictures. No amount of elf-chick cheesecake art is gonna make me want to flirt with you in alter-ego form. I'm a well-adjusted adult heterosexual male with a beautiful wife and no real desire to go fantasizing about fictional women. Don't get me wrong - I'd love to get Merisiel's input on how to go about playing a better rogue, or debate the merits of throwing daggers versus shuriken... but that's as far as I can go with such a charade.

2) There is a real danger that pushing things too far in that thread may just cause JJ to throw up his hands and walk away. Of course, that's his prerogative anyway, the moment he gets tired of it... but certain types of posts could very well exacerbate that end result to a premature eventuality.

So guys, maybe lighten up on the creepy, pervy what-do-u-look-like-naked-wanna-do-teh-sex-with-Kyra stuff? You're making yourselves look sort of pathetic, and I'd hate to see James discontinue his contact with fans because a few of us don't know how to behave like civilized people.

Sorry if this is out of line, but jeez. Srsly.

Just sayin'. =]

One of my players, a flamboyant bard named Maximilian, insisted on auditioning for "The Harpy's Curse" the day after the Swallowtail Festival in Burnt Offerings. He got a part - one that required him to wear a donkey suit - and I decided that all the PCs would be invited to attend the play after returning from the boar hunt, with seats in Aldern Foxglove's balcony box.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the early Final Fantasy video games (I through VI, specifically), so a fight in the opera house was inevitable. Here's how I ran it:

A Night At The Opera

In an attempt to draw the attention of Sheriff Hemlock and his men away from the glassworks long enough for Tsuto and Nualia's forces to take control of the building, the would-be warlord Tsuto directs a group of Licktoad tribe goblins to stir up mayhem during the local production of "The Harpy's Curse". The actual stage of the theater is roughly 60 feet wide and 40 feet deep, and south of the center stage lies a 10x20 orchestra pit; the main room of the playhouse itself comprises a floor level measuring some 60 feet by 90 feet, with second-story balconies boasting curtained-off box seats for affluent theatergoers. The balconies reach outward 10 feet off the east and west edges of the playhouse. Running overhead, a series of rafters allows access to various areas of the loft, allowing stagehands to lower and raise aerial props using pulleys and sandbags.

The six goblins enter the theater through the backdoor on the northwest side of the playhouse a few minutes after the first act of "The Harpy's Curse" begins, using a ladder to scale to the rafters and wreak havoc from above (they kick the ladder over once they're all in the rafters). The goblins are armed with fireworks pilfered from a lost shipment of goods they came across in a nearby swamp.

Each goblin carries a personal armament of 3 smoke bombs, 2 firecracker strips, and a roman candle. Using fireworks as offensive weapons is difficult, especially for a goblin; it requires a ranged touch attack at a -2 penalty, and on a roll of natural 1, the firework backfires and harms the wielder. The goblins choose their fireworks at random each round. Two of the goblin (select randomly) have potions of feather fall, and will drink them and drop to the ground to menace theatergoers after a few smoke bombs have been tossed.

Smoke bombs detonate in a 10-foot radius and force anyone in the affected area to make a DC 16 Fortitude save or spend 1 round coughing and choking, taking no other actions; additionally, all creatures within the area of effect gain 20% concealment for 1 round. Firecracker strips explode and deal 2d4 points of damage, half fire and half piercing. Roman candles deal 1d6 points of damage per hit. Lighting a roman candle is a full-round action, but when it detonates in the following round, it can be fired five times in rapid succession at an additional -2 penalty which is cumulative with the -2 inherent in using fireworks as weapons.

A player can recognize which ropes to cut to heft themselves to the rafters using the pulleys and sandbags with an Intelligence check of 16, or a Knowledge (engineering) check of 13 if they have ranks. Cutting a line requires an attack that deals piercing or slashing damage; a sandbagged rope has an AC of 12. Balancing on the rafters is tricky, and on any turn in which a PC moves any distance across a rafter (or tries to stand still on one), he or she must make a DC 13 Acrobatics check or fall 30 feet to the ground below (if they're lucky enough to be over the balcony box seats when they slip, it's only a ten-foot fall).

Play Notes: This encounter was a lot of fun to run. The bard, Maximilian, was stuck on stage for the first few rounds, and dove into the orchestra pit, taking cover beneath the house harpsichord. The goblins spotted him and one shot a few rounds of roman candles out at him, catching his donkey suit on fire. The gobs then downed their potions and dropped to the stage level to take out the irritating bard (he rolled a natural 1 on his perform check during the opera, so I think the goblins were offended by his poor singing more than anything else!). He wriggled out of the suit and ran backstage to retrieve his combat gear.

The remaining party members - Cress the rogue (swashbuckler), Harland the sorcerer, and Mirrus the ranger - were in the balcony with Aldern, who was incapacitated early on by fireworks and unable to help during the fight. Cress climbed the curtains in the box seats up to the rafters and tussled with a few goblins up top, nearly losing his footing on several occasions.

At one point, Cress was dangling from the rafters by his fingertips; one of the goblins crept menacingly across the rafters to his position, impaling his hand with a dogslicer. A few seconds later, Harland used mage hand to ignite the goblin's fireworks with cinders from the burning sheet music in the orchestra pit, reducing the goblin to little more than a shower of green fleshy chunks. Unfortunately, the blast also hit Cress, knocking him off the rafters to the balcony and rendering him unconscious.

Mirrus, meanwhile, made use of his goblinoid favored enemy fetish, sniping at the little green freaks with his longbow. A few goblins jumped from the rafters to his position on the balcony, flanking and forcing him into melee with nothing but a dagger (Mirrus usually favors the kukri, but damaged his weapon during the boar hunt thanks to the Critical Fumble Deck).

The last two remaining goblins were the ones down on the stage level, and they were trying to get up top to attack the group again by shooting the sandbagged rope pulleys with crossbows. One succeeded, launching himself toward the ranger and getting stabbed for his trouble; the other couldn't land the shot, and Maximilian emerged from backstage to skewer him with his rapier.

This encounter was about an hour long, suitably challenging, and fun for me as the GM as well as my players. Many times they lost actions due to smoke bombs, which gave a better sense of urgency to the encounter. They got creative with their actions, too, and I was really pleased with how they thought through each of their turns so carefully. If anyone else uses this, let me know how it turns out for you!

Hi All,

This is a call to all players in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina! The Raleigh Tabletop Role Playing Game Association will be hosting the first annual Game Master's Fair at Red Sun Academy on April 30th, 2011. The event will feature over a dozen different tables running a wide variety of games, including Pathfinder, D&D 4E, Savage Worlds, World of Darkness, Warhammer, Fudge/Fate, and many, many more!

Additionally, we'll be auctioning off seven GMs who will run a game in the systems of their choice for the winning bidder. Proceeds from the GM auction are used to fund the GM Fair, as well as future events organized by RTR.

Among the GMs who have volunteered to be auctioned are yours truly (Richard Moore's the name in the meatlife world), and Andy Miller, a published RPG writer with credits in both Dragon and Dungeon Magazine (his module "Ex Keraptis Cum Amore" made the cover of Dungeon #77!).

We will also host workshops and discussions led by experienced GMs throughout the day - come on in and get tips for improving your game!

For full details on the 2011 Raleigh Game Master's Fair, visit the following website:

http://remoore.tripod.com/gmfair2011.html

Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you there!

I got a copy of the NWoD core rules at a steeply discounted rate recently. I mainly have it so I can make mortal characters if I decide to dip into a friend's game, but I'm also considering trying to use it to run something for my own group, who needs a break from d20 and class-based gaming.

Knowing my players as I do, I think it's safe to say that none of them are enthused about being werewolves, vampires, or mages. And even if the interest were stronger, I really don't want to dump too much money into a NWoD book collection.

My question is, what sort of campaigns can be run using only the core book? Are there online resources for supplemental material that can be used to flesh out a game where all the characters are mortal? It seems that the core rules give virtually no statistics for supernatural enemies for mortals to fight (though I've just gotten the book and haven't had much time to read it in-depth), which strikes me as an impediment to running a mortals-only game.

I have a secret fixation with Falcon's Hollow and the adventures that are set in it. I've got print copies of every module set there, except this one. Anybody got a spare one lying around that they'd be willing to part with for a reasonable price?

I am running The Skinsaw Murders for a group of four players, two of whom are relatively new to gaming (my wife ran Burnt Offerings for the same group, with me as a player in addition to the others, and we've now switched roles).

Both of the new players are somewhat playing against type with their builds. One player took a pre-generated character, Kyra, and retooled her to fit her tastes (mainly just by dropping the Sun domain and replacing it with Fire). She is going for a cleric build that focuses on melee fighting, which is relatively easy to accommodate, and she's adjusting well to running a character that can help out her fellow party members but still do "her thing" - namely, slashing at things with scimitars.

The other new player is running a rogue, but absolutely refuses to engage things in melee, which makes getting in sneak attack damage difficult and is handicapping his ability to be as effective as his allies.

As a player, I rarely run rogues, and when I do, I skew more towards melee skirmish rather than ranged attacks. So I have a hard time coaching this player on how to be more effective in his role. So I was wondering if people can offer some general advice on how to play a rogue so as to actually deliver sneak attack damage with bowshots, and also how I as a GM can facilitate and encourage his playstyle.

This looks awesome.

JAMES HARMS NO READ!

Okay, with that out of the way: I run a PF game for a group of 11th level evil PCs. Last night, they stumbled onto a nest of neh-thalggu in a 200-foot deep hole beneath an arctic area of the world. I originally placed eight in the cavern, and they finished off three of them. The other five went invisible and scurried away into tunnels branching off from the main cavern. I ended the game with a cliffhanger: a sudden avalanche caused by the lightning bolts the neh-thalggu used on the PCs caused the cavern to partially collapse, sealing the PCs inside with the rest of the collective.

For the next session of play, I want to map out a tunnel system and play cat and mouse with the PCs and the brain collectors. I'm trying to imagine what a group of neh-thalggu would do to fortify their lair against possible intruders.

I had also considered the idea that each brain collector has a dominant brain that grants them a unique personality, and maybe even a unique spell list as a result (so far I've played them as preferring the brains of arcane spellcasters in order to bolster the power of their collective, which, rightly, has the party's sorcerer a bit nervous).

I'm about to start combing through Lords of Madness and some of my other monster books looking for other types of aberrations to place in the tunnels - ideally, creatures with which the neh-thalggu would be able to coexist and potentially even have a symbiotic connection.

I'd really like to hear thoughts from any of you on what creatures to introduce and/or how the brain collectors' lair could be structured with hazards and traps appropriate to creatures with such an alien mindset.

Dunno if you guys are having an issue with your SSL, but I had to add a security exception to log in to my account tonight, just a minute or so prior to the timestamp on this post.

(I'm sure the web team's already on it if it is a big deal, but I habitually report crap like this for my own job while combing company websites and the compulsion is hard to break. =] )

I'm considering using D2 as a one shot game for a session I am running at a mini-con in July. Since the original adventure was designed for 7th level OGL characters, I'm debating how I want to handle conversion, if at all. I specifically want to use a canned module because I doubt I'll have time to design a scenario from the ground up for that event, but I also don't want to get too bogged down into conversion math.

What would the best option be: to bite the bullet and convert it entirely, or simply start the PCs out at a lower level (say 6th)? Or is D2 deadly enough that even 7th level Pathfinder PCs will find it challenging without them being nerfed or me converting all the monsters and traps?

In my wife's "Burnt Offerings" game, our party made it down to the second level of Thistletop and fought Bruthazmus, his concubines, and an NPC (Orek, I believe). We took care of the bugbear and the goblins, but the NPC held his ground for awhile.

The conversation went thusly between myself, playing a greataxe-wielding dwarf barbarian, and another player (Harms) who was running a weapon master-archetype fighter with a flail:

Me: "We need to interrogate him. Try to deal non-lethal damage..." *roll* "Hit, 11 nonlethal."

Harms: "CMB to trip."

GM: "He falls prone, but it's his turn. He stands up."

Me and Harms: "AoO! Trying for nonlethal again." *rolls* "Crap, we missed."

(Another round passes in much the same fashion, with both of us missing our nonlethal attack rolls.)

Me: "Alright, screw this, he's got 11 nonlethal already, so even if we deal lethal damage, it shouldn't completely kill him." *roll*

And then THIS happened. (We auto-confirm naturasl 20s, by the way, to offset the fact that we use the Critical Fumble Deck for natural 1s.)

Harms: "Yyyyeeeeeeeah. Yeah, that's not how you knock someone out."

GM: "Sooooo, 45 damage? Yeah. He's at negative 33. Good job, guys."

Me: "...Anyone know how to cast speak with dead?"