Robert Little's page

I can see that the Space Goblin pawn says "Goblins, Space"....however, in my head it says "Goblins in Spaaaaace".

No Iain M. Banks. List is invalid.

Whatever it is will probably involve prophetic dream sequences, or memory dream sequences maybe (since Prophecy doesn't work in Golarion since the death of Aroden). They turn up in every Avellone game I've ever played.

If the game is true to the Adventure Path, it would have dream sequences regardless of whether Avellone was involved or not....

Actually, Why is Fireball okay but not Grippli? They're both OGL, right?

Nope. If it is in the SRD it is available to use, but if it isn't it is considered D&D IP and not available (other examples would be Beholders or Mind Flayers). That said, I'm surprised that Grippli showed up in the Advanced Race Guide if they were D&D IP.

There's been Surprisingly little american Press. No Kotaku, No IGN, no Paizo itself chiming in via a blog or news post. Which honestly is pretty darn weird.

My experience is unless a Kickstarter does exceedingly well on its first day it doesn't get any special press coverage until a week or so into the project.

Most CW shows are on Netflix within a week of the season ending now.

TSR did star frontiers in 1982 i dont think it really caught on.

I loved the setting for Star Frontiers and it actually had a pretty good ship/vehicle/power armor crafting system (if you included the articles from Dragon magazine). It had decent support and right before it died, they published what was supposed to be the first in a series of new rules updates (Zebulon's Guide). Unfortunately, I think it got killed when Lorraine Williams took charge of TSR and switched the sci-fi focus to Buck Rogers.

Since Paizo is adamant that Starfinder will be Pathfinder compatible enough that Pathfinder monsters can just be dropped into Starfinder (Power Marine fighting Dragons!) I don't think Starfinder needs its own Bestiary Line. New additions to the Core Bestiary line just have to include an alien themed section that is more relevant to Starfinder but can be used just as well in Pathfinder and Done!

It doesn't necessarily need a whole line, but there is absolutely a need for a basic collection of critters than can be used immediately with ZERO conversion for folks who are either inexperienced or don't own (or want to own) Pathfinder books. Once we have a initial Bestiary tho, I think we'll probably be able to go a while before the next (either with the critters added by the adventure path or from 3rd Party materials).

Ideally the Starfinder Bestiary would mostly (80%+) be new creatures and the remaining would be converted versions of existing creatures that would be more difficult to convert on the fly, with info on how they fit into the future setting.

Weird, what sources did you read for that? I am doubting myself now but for some reason i was sure that it was going to be one core book and then one product line with books mixing GM, Player, Setting and AP all in one. That is why i was hoping it would be only larger page count softback a month. To an extent this kind of thing already happens. Say the AP is set in the bowels of Absalom Station, the book starts off with new traits, feats, archetypes and gear that everyone can use. the next chapter is the background and history of this part of the station, then there is the GM only AP information for a good while and then the last few pages are beastiary entries for what new creatures are used in the book. If the line does well enough we could see collected products focusing on just character options, setting info or space beastiaries but i dont see those becoming staple product lines you would subscribe to.

This is from Geek and Sundry's Interview with James Sutter:

With Pathfinder, we’ve got the monthly Adventure Path and the monthly Player Companions and Campaign Settings and all these different lines. Starfinder is going to be much smaller. We’re gonna have the Core Rulebook coming out at GenCon 2017 and we’ll probably do a hardcover or slightly more each year. The main thing we’re going to be doing is the Starfinder Adventure Path, a monthly AP product which will have not just the adventures, but new setting information, new rules information, new monsters. That’s going to be one of the primary vectors through which we give people new information about the world and the rules.

From what I understand the product output for Starfinder (at least out of the gate) will be significantly less than Pathfinder. Unlike Pathfinder which has five RPG lines (the rules, campaign, companion, adventure path, and modules), Starfinder will only have two (rules and adventure path). If it is successful enough to warrant additional product lines, that means it will probably be successful enough to warrant the additional staff necessary to support those lines.

Rocinante (The Expanse)
White Star (Babylon 5)
Galactica (Battlestar Galactica 2004)

@Robert Little - I'd like to see something that supports PCs being at stations providing things to do in combat. FrEx: Weapons station is attack rolls, engineering station is repair rolls and rolls to provide a bonus to attack or defense (via shielding) by rerouting power, comms station for diplomacy or intimidation or bluff, etc.

That would be fine. I'm just wary of a system that gives ships an AC, a bunch of hit points, and has ship based weapons that do damage inline with what PC's do ("I swing my sword at the ship and hit AC 28." "Ok, you hit roll damage."..."The ship fires one laser cannon at the fighter and one at your ship. It hits both times, rolling 8d6 damage for each.")

Is the goal for starships/space combat to use a system that scales up from personal combat (ala the vehicle system in Ultimate Combat) or to have a separate system that PCs can only indirectly affect (for example, PC's directly attacking a vessel as opposed to fighting vessel on vessel). My preference would be a separate system as the scaling never seems to work right, although that might affect backwards compatiblility for folks wanting to have space cruiser vs outer dragon battles.

Mecha? Golemecha? Flumphs in power armor?

Dragon Empires Hardcover
Great Beyond Hardcover
Impossible Kingdoms (Vudra) Gazetter
Qadira source book
Beneath the Waves Gazatter (underwater nations beneath the Inner Sea)
Eldest / First World Sourcebook (in the same vein as Chronicle of the Righteous / Book of the Damned)
Fragments of Time Source book (info to run alternative history or time travel campaigns; similar to Second Darkness - Armageddon Echo)

The story seems to imply both of her parents may still be alive...what kind of adventurer has those?!?

Sigh, yet even more Paizo Publishing promotion for what is, in a nutshell, just another version of Wizards of the Coast's "D&D Tools" (aka a stat block generator we have to pay for). One day we'll get a free stat block generator I guess...one day...one sweet sweet day...

There is no possible way to have a character builder with the level of functionality of Hero Lab, with nearly day-of-release support and reasonably expect it to be free. Entering the content alone (without updates to the actual software for big changes, performance updates, etc) would easily be a full time job for at least one person (maybe two). Lone Wolf uses contractors and splits the work, so they don't need to have dedicated staff, but still, there is a lot of labor involved and that labor deserves compensation (Full disclosure: I used to be one of those contractors).

Back in the 3.x days, there were a handful of folks who worked on the "HeroForge" spreadsheet for Excel and did it for free as a labor of love. They tried to incorporate most of the WotC material into the spreadsheet (focusing on stuff that was usable in Living Greyhawk), but it was at their own pace and it could be months before a new book was incorporated into the sheet. In addition, it had only a small fraction of the functionality; it didn't automatically apply spell or magic item effects and at least early on you could only use the spreadsheet on Windows PCs (as it required VisualScript functionalities that weren't available on Mac OS). I used it and honestly loved it, but at the same time, it was the best horse in the race and if there had been a program that did everything that HeroForge did and more, I would have happily paid for it (there were other paid programs available, but they offered even less functionality than that spreadsheet did).

Sorry for the rant, but the whole "give me free stuff" thing is a pet-peeve of mine.

I'm curious how the Unchained classes play with existing archetypes and prestige classes. With they seamlessly work, will they or the archetypes/p-classes require minor, house-ruled tweaks, or are they largely incompatible? Does the book address this at all or does it leave it to the GM/Players to resolve?

For some reason I read the title as "Psionics Embiggened" and that made it more appealing.

No love for Donahan...sigh.

And do a blog post detailing fantasy and sci-fi mixes in other media. There is well over a generation now of gamers born after Krull, Thundaar the Barbarian, and Ralph Bakshi's Wizards.

I just wish I could afford to sponsor a brood of beasts and get Mythic Mesoamerica made...

Also, Hero Lab doesn't have a huge dedicated staff. For most of the data files, they have a few contracted authors entering the data with one staff coordinator compiling and adding the new material to the data files. If there is a significant deviation from the basic rules for a new feature, that requires attention from a programmer, who is splitting his time between several different data sets (besides Pathfinder, he's working on getting the Shadowrun 5th Edition dataset working as well as Fate Core). He does get behind on some features, but every once in a while he comes thru (for example, the Black Blade archetype took about 18 months to get fully implemented in Hero Lab, even tho most of Ultimate Magic was available and working within 2 months of the books release).

The pricing is reasonable I think for how much it costs them to produce (I've been a contractor for Lone Wolf in the past, so I know what they pay) and their likely sales volume.

I was pretty much assuming that the August Player Companion is going to be Androids of Golarion to go with the Adventure Path. Besides the Iron Gods campaign traits, we'd get some android and robot themed rules items for players - android sorceror "bloodlines" like nanite or electrostasis, maybe a Luck subdomain like Probability, and some archetypes like Steel Fist monks and Short Circuit barbarians.

Im not sure where the writers were going with the wife beater thing. I understand that they wanted him to be mentally unstable from size changing so much over the years, but they went in an extreme direction. Some of the writers went nuts with this idea and wanted to make him a brutal man, a mistake outside of the ultimates line imo. I really did enjoy the side of him we saw in the ant man team up.

The original incident of "wife-beating" was absolutely unintended and the result of a miscommunication between the writer and the artist and a lack of time to correct the mistake before it went to print (as written, Pym throws his hands out in frustration and accidentally catches Wasp in the face with a backhand. The artist depicted it as a backhand slap that looked intentional).

Since then (particularly the Ultimates universe), they have written that in as an actual character trait for the character.

Also, Pym is not the only person to take on the Ant-Man mantle. Since they are not having Pym be the origin for Ultron in the Marvel movies and since they are already strong on the super scientist front (with the Science Bros), I could definitely see Rudd playing the Scott Lang version of Ant-Man. Scott was a reformed thief who stole the Ant-Man tech as a last resort to try to save his dying daughter.

That is one of the reasons people are hoping to see the bonus feat moved to level 2, giving you the +1 Bab, and making it not quite so frontloaded.

Yeah, I'd really like to see the bonus feats changed to 2nd level plus another every 3 levels. That way you'd get a bonus feat at some of the key BAB thresholds (8th level is +6 BAB, which has a lot of feats; 11th level is +8 BAB which has Improved Critical and Greater Weapon Focus, if they decide to give us access to that). Over 20 levels we'd get just as many feats, just less up front and at better timing to take advantage of them.

I also wouldn't mind if they allowed bonus feat swaps (ala Fighter) at maybe levels 5, 11, and 17. Not as often as a fighter, but enough to let you tweak your character if a planned progression goes awry.

Also, adding class skills based on blessings, such as adding Knowledge (Arcana) for choosing the Magic blessing.

I could see doing this, although some of the "relevant" skills are probably already part of the class list. Maybe in those cases, give a bonus to the skill?

Charlie Sheen and Nicholas Cage with different wigs and facial hair as all of them

I really don't want to imagine either of them as Sheyln.

From today's Paizo Blog:
"Finally we get to the warpriest. We are looking at strengthening the role of this class by taking it a bit away from the cleric's position. While we want the class to be among the best at healing and casting spells on itself and we are investigating a mechanic to let it do just that (probably in place of channel energy). We are also looking into a new class feature that allows the warpriest to be an effective combatant with the favored weapon of its deity, regardless of what weapon is favored by their deity. Look for increased damage and additional effects depending on the type of weapon and its role in the game."

Most of their comments regarding Psionics and the Pathfinder setting have tied Psionics to Vuldra, rather than Numeria (i.e. if they ever do a Vuldra campaign book, psionics would go hand in hand with that).

I'd like a Mwangi set book that doesn't use an outsider (i.e. non-Mwangi) as the readers "in". Have the main protagonist be a local (maybe a graduate of Magaambya).

I'm toying with making Karzoug mythic, but probably not making the PCs mythic (or only giving them a single tier of mythic when they use the Runeforge). I don't want to change the overall CRs too much, so right now, I'm thinking Karzoug is going to end up 20 transmuter / 4 archmage with most of his mythic path abilities being things that he already has as part of his stat block (longevity, pure destiny (immunity to madness), pure body (immunity to disease) and give him a weapon weakness to dominant weapons . That'll probably bump his effective CR up to 22 and the overall Eye of Avarice encounter to 23.

If we do anything with the characters post Karzoug, I'll count the Eye as a trial and award them another tier before going forward.

Thanks for adding the retraining rules. I haven't played PFS since Season 2 due to not being able to retool characters to take advantage of new rules (particularly archtypes that have to be chosen at 1st level). I have at least one character I'm looking forward to taking out of retirement (assuming I can still find his character/tracking sheets).

First thing that comes to mind for me are the Husks from Mass Effect.

So now that the modules will come packaged with a poster map...how much would it raise the price point to add a sheet of module specific pawns? :)

Honestly, rather than spend development time on it, license and use an existing voice chat client like Ventrilo or Mumble and develop an add-in to give control/display functionality to it in-game (so you don't have to Alt-tab out to change channels). There isn't a point in doing more (at least at the start of the game).

I've been pondering the whole assassin/bounty thing and there are a few things that stick in my craw. As discussed so far, there is no option or ability to conceal your identity from your victim. You kill someone, they automatically know who you are and can put a bounty on you. Second, if you take an "assassination" job from someone else, you are taking on all the risk of the bounty and the person hiring you takes none.

A couple proposed solutions:
Disguise: Have a disguise skill that you can activate. Once activated, it has a timer and a cooldown (in minutes) that will conceal your identity. Once you engage in combat, the timer (not the cooldown) increases in speed. If it takes you too long to kill your foe, you are identified. The speed at which the timer decays is based on where you are (middle of nowhere, slower; in the middle of town, very fast). The cooldown on the ability is to prevent folks from engaging and disengaging the target to prevent identification. The cooldown should be long enough that the target will have opportunity to heal/rebuff, if the assassin tries to go after them again.

Marks: When someone is killed by a disguised foe, a tradable "calling card" is left (as an item). Using an investigation skill, you can identify the assassin linked to the calling card (failure burns the card and you fail to learn the identity). You don't have to do the investigation yourself, you can hire someone else with more skill to do it for you.

Contracts and Selling Out: If you hire an assassin, you have to create a contract - the contract lists both the target and the employer. If, after an assassination, an assassin is targeted for a bounty, they can sell out their boss to the target, transferring the bounty to the employer. However, if they sell out the boss, it will be noted on future contracts and may affect reputation.

Anywho, just a few thoughts.

I was running the AD&D module "Under Illefarn" for some friends back in college. A couple in the group (the boyfriend played a paladin, the girlfriend a barbarian) were both knocked out while the group was having a running battle with orcs. The party didn't have the resources or time to get them up (they weren't bleeding out, just unconscious) so they stuffed them in a secret room they had found but hadn't explored, while they left and continued their fight with the orcs.

The barbarian came to while the rest of the party was still away and managed to get a torch lit. She was getting her bearings, when she noticed a shelf on the back wall of the room with an assortment of jewelry. She immediately leapt up "ooh, shiny" and grabbed one of the necklaces - triggering the falling stone block trap that fell on top of her boyfriend's unconscious paladin and blocked the exit.

The rest of the party eventually came back for her and was able to get her out of the room, but alas, nothing was to be done for the paladin. Once the rest of the dungeon had been cleared and the dwarves were able to move in to reclaim it, the party arranged for a plaque to be mounted on the wall where the secret room had been located.

Here lies Thryn, Paladin of Tyr
He got thin, so we buried him here

One request...the ability to play an non-comic standard female (overweight, flat-chested, no butt, whatever). I've been playing SW:ToR and I was annoyed to discover that while you can play an overweight (downright obese) male, you are utterly incapable of choosing anything but a (very) healthy height-weight proportionate female. Sure, the vast swarms of folks might not choose the option, but it should be there.

I try to do business with locally owned and operated businesses as much as I can, just so that the money I spend remains in the community rather than going off to bolster some other cities economy. I do make some exceptions to that, if the product I want to buy has other issues with it (for example, I generally don't buy Paizo's printed books because a) they are printed overseas and fuel/money is wasted shipping it around, b) they don't use any recycled materials in their books or shipping materials as far as I've been able to tell.) I prefer printed books and will pay a premium for a quality product that meets my criteria, but if it is not available, I will settle for a PDF.

I'm sort of surprised that there hasn't been any discussion about this on here, since Adamant has been a Pathfinder 3PP and all. Then again, I was completely unaware of it until io9 did a story about it yesterday...

Far West
Far West Kickstarter Project

The first thing that grabbed me about this setting/game was Rick Hershey's art. Very evocative and the particular style he is using I really like (tho like one of the folks that posted on the website, I'd prefer he didn't use as common of photo references as he does - if I recognize the photo that was used, it breaks my suspension of disbelief.).

I like that the setting is a western/wuxia combo, but it isn't an alternate history. Things can be built up organically without having to try and wedge in explanations for them.

I like that there is already a bunch of short stories up on the site to sell the setting and that they are all good. And that much more fiction is coming.

I like that it is a Kickstarter project that can really stake itself out at the beginning and give it a good bit of momentum right away.

Take a look and see what you think.

(BTW, if someone from Paizo reads this and decides to go in for the Retail Patronage on Kickstarter for the web store, I'd appreciate the nod when you sign up ;)

I know their will be one weiner that will say "I made it using the offical rules from an offical Pathfinder book so why can I not play with it."

There always is. Rule #1: Don't be that guy.

So I'm planning out the first session for my Kingmaker game and decided I wanted to open the game with the PCs invited to a "social mixer", basically a chance for the Lord Mayor to show off the chartered groups to a mix of Swordlords, merchants, and local nobles. The goal is to give the PCs the impression how political the choice to send the groups out is, as well as to give them an impression of the leaders of the other groups. The leader of the Iron Wraiths and his aide-de-camp will be present as well as Maegar Varn and Baroness Stroon-Drelev (her husband departed early so he could time his departure with a southbound caravan headed down the East Sellen).

I'm building up the captain of the Iron Wraiths as a 7th level Ranger so they can get the impression that the Wraiths are (currently) much more experienced group. I'm setting the background of the Wraiths as a mercenary company with experience raiding into Numeria on behalf of Brevoy, and the captain has even acquired a piece of Numerian technology that has earned him the ire of the Technic League (a skymetal gauntlet that bound to his hand and functions as a ring of force shield). I'm looking forward to the PC's finding his severed arm with the gauntlet still attached during Part 5, as part of either Irovetti or the giants loot.

Maegar Varn I plan on playing up as a genuinely nice guy who is taking the opportunity to make his name. I'm not sure of the PCs backgrounds yet, but my goal is to strike up either a long distance friendship or romance with one of the PCs so that when Varnhold goes silent in Part 3 the PCs will a) have more incentive to investigate and b) be more horrified when they find out his final fate.

I'm also planning on creating a few merchants and lords to meet who will be the ones responsible for providing the gold, equipment, and manpower for the early BP that Restov awards the PCs. As the campaign progresses, the plan is for some of the merchants and nobles to fall out of favor and probably towards the very end have one effectively sell Restov out to New Stetven (I'm hoping to follow up the campaign with the Rostland Rebellion).

I think I've got most of the significant players in Restov lined up, but if anyone has any thoughts on how to further flesh out the ideas above or additional people worth including in the social, I'd love to read them.

I think the second set should still link to the beginners box, yet have broad appeal. I think having a Goblin War Party set (as there are definitely a bunch of goblin pawns in the beginners box) is a great idea, as a) Pathfinder Goblins are "cool" and b) everyone can use a box (or two or three).

With them being smaller minis, maybe there is a chance of getting say 6 figures in a box for the same price point, or maybe 4 regular goblins and a goblin dog rider. And maybe a goblin with a fez.

James Jacobs wrote:

There are actually a couple of element "wheels" in Tian Xia. Cosmology is somewhat different as well, but in other ways it's the same.

How in the hell is the cosmology different? The entire planar structure of the multiverse re-arranges itself if you move a few thousand miles on a one single planet?

It doesn't have to change...it can be the same, the difference is just in the perception of it. Its like going down a street every day for years and thinking you know everything on it, but then you meet someone who tells you about the great restaurant in the basement of one of the buildings that you never noticed before. It was there the whole time, you just didn't know to look for it.

Yeah, hands down the Leigh Brackett books are the best of the Planet Stories line so far. I'm getting towards the end of The Ginger Star and am annoyed that I'm going to have to wait until October before the next Stark book (Hounds of Skaith).

As far as GRRM, the Starks were the fictional analog to the York's (as the Lannister's were to the Lancasters). The name was likely chosen for similarity to the source, although I guess a nod to Brackett's character is not out of the question.