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While I appreciate Paizo working with smaller companies (and I do like Geek Grind), this is a product I won't be backing. K-Cups, and single-use plastics as a whole, are not something I personally want to fund more of. I'm glad the Geek Grind fam are looking into more eco-friendly solutions, but I think I'll wait until those solutions are actually available before slapping my money down.

I AM glad that Geek Grind is expanding their product line. I like their products a ton! But sometimes the best customer feedback is honest feedback.

This is the best. I am officially living in the best timeline. My crops have been watered and my skin is cleansed and clear. All I ever wanted was Starfinder Iconics fiction featuring my favorite nonbinary sneaky-sneak android doing sneaky-sneak things. Not only do I have that, but they are also, canonically, a cocksure show-off with a heart of gold. I can die happy now.

.... unless there might be more, someday?? More fiction, more novels, more comics, yes?

I apologize for digging up an old thread, but I just found this and needed to comment.

I was at GenCon 2018 and played #10-00 in the 7-8 subtier. I still gush about how amazing the experience was. We had an amazing GM, a party of 3 Bards, and the entire time everyone at the table was laughing uproariously. It was a non-stop five-and-a-half hours of eight people having fun. I still wish I'd have gotten the names of some of them just because it was the most memorable PFS game I'd ever played. And we all commented on the special, too.

Everyone I've talked to about it says nothing but great things about 10-00. It was fun, creative, and ran smooth as butter. I had the privilege of running it for my local area and found it among the easiest multi-tables to run while still being a total powerhouse of a scenario; for the lore, combat, and evocative gameplay. The writing was tight, the formatting was excellent, and the combat was as visually flavorful as it was mechanically memorable. And I'll never forget the faces of everyone at the table I played with when we started the final fight in earnest. Hoo-boy.... Hoo-boy, it was a tense one.

But the point I'm trying to make isn't just that I enjoyed the scenario. The reason I wanted to comment here, not just leave a review, is that I needed to see this post today. Today, as I think about my future and hopes and dreams, only a few months before next GenCon, I learned that one of my favorite PFS specials was written during a time of immense suffering. That the scenario I've gushed about for a year now was borne during intense emotional struggling; like a light in a very, very dark place. By certain rights it shouldn't have shone at all, but it did. I needed to see that. I needed to express my gratitude to you for sharing your personal story, and the lesson you learned from it.

I wish depression could be beaten up and banished like an unwelcome demon. I wish it didn't decide to cast Summon Ally (anxiety) in most of the cases it appears. I wish it didn't interfere with the things I truly need to do, or the things I want to do. And for a very long time, it was hard to fight against it. Not just because it was as insidious as it was tiring, but because I thought I couldn't handle anything else until I was "better". That I would fail or let people down, as if depression was some personal flaw of character. Recently, in the past few months, I learned I was more capable than I thought. Today, with your story, I learned that I may be more capable than that, even.

I don't mean to be naive, of course. Depression, like all mental illnesses, is complex. It waxes and wanes and interacts in complex ways with your environment and other illnesses. I would never just say to someone, "You can do it if you believe it!" It's too tone-deaf to how insidious this illness is, and the physical complications that come with it. But for me, I needed to see people with depression and anxiety succeeding in spite of it. I needed to see creation and beauty break free from that darkness. It didn't stop you, though I'm sure it tried. I can only imagine how hard it must've been. But by god you did it. 10-00 is here. I'm so happy for you.

I got worried maybe now wasn't the right time. "I should wait to get better"; "I can't do much right now"; "I could be setting myself to fail". And then I got worried there would never be a right time. But your story was beautiful, as was the message I saw in it. You can work to get better while still be Good. You can create. You can write. You're allowed do things in spite of the darkness, even if that darkness is still there when you're done. As dumb as it is, it feels like I've been given permission to start living.

This is a very difficult feeling to articulate accurately, but I think it feels like hope. And kindness. I'd like to pocket it and take it with me. Thank you for sharing it.

I LOVE these new faction approaches. They feel organic and inherently easy to place a character to. The leaders are personable with moral philosophies, and the faction objectives are VERY agreeable to roleplay situations. I'm already getting ideas for new characters that can fit into each! YAY!

I also love how all the factions so far fall along some form of Explore, Report, Cooperate. Makes it really easy to explain why your PATHFINDER characters would align with them, which I sometimes struggled with for the old campaign-oriented factions (and especially the nationality ones). Plus, Fola Barun's horror at the HR nightmare that is PFS is low-key hilarious to me. The increase in meta-awareness has been very entertaining the past few seasons. Definitely making one of my first characters for Envoy's Alliance.

..... also LEEZARD-FOLK FACTION LEADER.

I'm sort of liveblogging the survey as I go, but the questions are good and I appreciate Paizo's willingness to ask them. I have some thoughts from a GM and event organizer's perspective.

I'd like to see an assumed table format that allows my GMs to run more successfully, and for my trainee GMs to feel more confident. So I love the idea of examining 3-player tables with more viability, and 7-player tables with more scrutiny. No one likes running 7-player tables, even if they're perfectly capable of it. On top of that, it can sometimes cause logistic issues when gaming at stores and trying to cram eight people around a table. Yet because of the current assumptions with table minimums, no one really wants to split off into tables of 4 and 3 either. It makes having a group of seven players an odd grey area for organizers that can be frustrating when trying to please your players, GMs, and the store all at once.

And as I said, I'm in favor of OP structure that encourages GMs to GM, even if they're out of practice or new. I think having one array of statblocks could help with that, and I'm wondering if that might allow more room for different content in the scenario. But I'd also wonder about the balancing of those such encounters for minimum and maximum table sizes. Currently the sub-tiers encourage a very even playing field because most people are within one level of each other. If you have three level-4 players or seven level-6 players in a tier 5 scenario, I'm legitimately curious how that might play out compared to the current model.

As for XP, I REALLY enjoy the current model for its simplicity, but if quests are going to get uncoupled from a pack and released more frequently, I'd prefer a system with no fractions. However, I'd like to mention that the biggest issues we ran into with quest packs were time constraints, and the latest Starfinder quest pack knocked that problem out of the park. It was fun, engaging, and fell solidly into our allotted time to play. Maybe having the coherent packs include fewer parts and be more time conscious for the overall pack is a simpler solution. I would examine combining the models for quests so there are some more disjointed quest packs meant for convention demoing, and quest packs like the current model for store play. Both offer valuable game options for various situations.

As for the guide: the most basic, player-focused, and NEW player-focused content should go in the front. The intended audience should essentially flow from front to back as New Players >>> Veteran Organizers. New players should have priority when it comes to flow of information since they're the most likely to get intimidated by the required reading. And I HAVE had new players skim the guide and make mistakes because they didn't want to be bothered to do "homework" for their hobby. A quick-start guide with page references for more complete information would be ideal.

I'd also like to swing back to the GM boon question, though. Especially the part where the players must gain an Infamy to gain one of the boons. IF the GMs get to choose their own boon, does the Infamy still apply for GMs?

I 100% support character sheets with intuitive information display. You had me at bubbles.

I think Lyz Lidell summed up my sentiments perfectly. "Crystal is the game designer I want to be when I grow up." Paizo completely shattered my perceptions of the RPG community only being a place for (shall we say) "old-school, male nerds" and helped me be confident gaming as a young, female, and queer person. Crystal's work was a large part of that. Her presence as a industry giant put stars in my eyes. She was the first Paizo staffer I followed on social media, both for her hilarious posts and powerful insight into the industry and the society that shaped it. She's an RPG "Renaissance Woman". She's widely respected and loved. She has awesome hair. She's the #1 person in the industry that inspires me to create. She helped me realize that there's room at the table for EVERYONE, and that's always how it should be.

Look, this sounds like a eulogy, but I'm glad that she'll still be helping out as a freelancer. I look forward to see where Crystal goes next. I wish all the best to her and will continue to enjoy her work as *insert every industry job here*.

I do not think the Resonance system is a bad idea, but I DO think this is bad implementation of it.

I like how investing works on paper. Instead of slots you can wear any logical combination of magic swag, but your personal force of will and adventuring experience will determine how many magical effects you can manage at once. Makes sense. I will echo what others have said here and say that there needs to be more clear separation of investment effects and activation effects in the statblocks. But honestly, there are a LOT of things I dislike about those statblocks.

Firstly, they cross words too much. Operate, activate, focus, invest, interact, ect. There were multiple places in reading the statblocks where I had no idea what it was asking me to understand. I'll go further with this and propose that there don't have to be any separation of action types at all for magic items. You made the parallel of activation to spell components, but spellcasters have multiple ways they interact with the various casting actions, as well as ways they can replace one action with another or ignore the need of an action entirely. They can also choose with certain spells how many actions to invest in the casting. This makes sense. They're spellcasters. They do spells.

No class revolves around magic items unless you've been hiding the PF2 Occultist up your sleeve (Alchemists notwithstanding). There seems to be no reason to differentiate activation actions except for flavor reasons, or out of some fear that players will go hogwild with activation unless a named mechanic is attached to it. The only important part of the activation that I can see from this blog are the number of actions needed for it. That, and specific clarification on what the action is doing is all I need to know to understand the item. Looking at the item and seeing "Focus Activation" tells me nothing important. I'm going to have to read the item's paragraph info anyway to learn that I need to pull the hood up as an action, and at that point the "Focus" part unnecessarily complicates the wording.

Last thing I disliked was the double-dipping in Resonance. If something uses charges, I fail to see why Resonance is needed. The point of the mechanic was to condense the different types of magic items usages into one system, but not only are charges a thing, but they are a thing without actually being distinct enough to warrant being a thing. If I spent Resonance to charge the staff already, why am I using Resonance again? If I'm a fighter and expected to protect my squishier friends, why am I the most hindered when it comes to using consumables? Potions already cost time and/or money to acquire, then using them is in itself a risk. It's in your belly. You're not getting it back if you end up needing it more later. The potion itself is literally a resource, so I don't see the need to attach a resource tax to using the resource. I love the trinket idea, but I do not think that 100% of magic items need to have a Resonance cost. I think that this good idea and good intention with Resonance went a little past the mark and needs to be reeled back a little to better achieve what it was intended to do.

I saw the icons they were using for the playtest handouts at PaizoCon. I'm not thrilled on them -- different icon for reaction, action, double action, free action. I think they're all reasonably distinct, but not particuraly "descriptive". Didn't feel they grabbed the eye in a useful way. So hoping they revist them a bit after the playtest (and definitely need to work on the accessibility concerns people have raised).

If the icons were the ones shown during the banquet, then I agree with NielsenE. If it weren't for Jason describing what I was looking at, I would have no clue what the symbols were supposed to mean. I saw two and I THINK they were the reaction and action ones, but if it weren't for the dialogue going along with them I wouldn't have a clue. They had same colors, similar shapes, similar iconography. These are not traits of properly distinct image markers. Though I must praise them for being simple. The Starfinder icons had too much detail and similar color hues to be immediately distinct, but now there's a problem of these icons being too similar.

I think gustavo iglesias had the complete right of it, actually.

Anyone who drives is used to icons. A signal of a triangle with the drawing of a car and some zig-zag lines below it is easier to see and understand that a big billboard that reads "beware, the road is slippery ahead".

Road signs are meant to be glanced at and immediately distinct and understood. They have three things that are used as identifiers: color, shape, and imagery/wording. A red, octagonal sign that says "STOP" means stop, and even if you're too far away to read the words, the shape and color is distinct. Yellow signs mean caution and vary in exact meaning by shape and picture, but seeing a yellow sign tells you that it's a warning about something. Red means regulatory or prohibited behavior. No Parking, No U-Turns, Stop, ect. And lane movement will always incorporate white rectangles with arrow pictures.

Now granted, I can only speak for American road signs, but they serve a similar purpose to the icons in the book. Players should only need to glance at the icon to understand what it's trying to convey, and icons need to be distinct from one another so that there is minimal need to examine the symbol closely. Colors and shapes are the best way to do this, then details inside the icons like lines or patterns IF needed. I will put my vote down for "yes", but with the caveat that if it's done poorly, it will be more trouble than just writing out the action type with words.

The interesting thing to note here is that the OP simply stated that core rules should be inclusive to a wide variety of play styles and not place exclusive restrictions on key options. They specify the alignment rules specifically, but the core statement itself is a very neutral stance. Most arguments against it boil down to "LG Paladins are important to me" or "Without restrictions there would be abuse of the system". The first one is an emotive statement and could be flipped around to the opposite to the same effect. Also, adding restrictions due to preference is MUCH easier than working around a system that assumes restrictions and uses them as a balancing mechanic. The second statement excludes the point where the OP says that previously aligned classes SHOULD have restrictions, but just not alignment ones. A Paladin of Pharasma would still fall for consorting with undead or allying with necromancers. This is much more specific to the Paladin's class flavor than a flat restriction to all Paladins regardless of deity or philosophy, and it gives LESS room for dissenters to argue against because the restrictions are more specific. A player could argue for withholding healing from a murderer by getting fancy with alignment interpretations, but if the god giving them their powers has a rule about never withholding healing for the injured there is much less room for interpretation and it encourages roleplaying as the first response rather than pedantic arguing to get their way. Granted, every player and game I've ever been in ALREADY considers the deity's code more important than alignment, but at that point the alignment is just a guideline and inconvenient thing to remember when we feel like arguing.

Any other class can be the same way. The restrictions, codes, rules, what-have-yous are free to become personal and evocative for both classes and individual players. Could this be done with homebrew and personal preference? Yes. But again, when a new player picks up the book, sees the alignment restrictions, needs to be told what they even mean, then have to learn how to roleplay that alignment on top of being new: this is much more obtuse than just saying, "Here's a list of rules you have to follow or else." Cut and dry. No haggling. Arguably more restrictive than alignments, but easier to follow because they're clearly stated and not up for interpretation. The discussion here isn't about preferences. The discussion is about what would be best for PF2 to adopt as their default ruling going forward in a modern roleplaying community.

The first thing I do when making random encounter tables is decide what CR range I want it to cover, then look for monsters/creatures that fit both the CR and terrain. Theme depends on terrain, general setting, and campaign theme. If I really want a monster that fits the terrain but not the theme or CR I add a template to it. For example: I added the Beast of Chaos template to all animals on my table and the Fiendish template to all monstrous humanoids because the area is demon-infested. If all else fails, you can always make your own creatures to populate your table, but this takes some legwork on your part. And speaking of work, the area you want the table to apply to depends on how much work you want to do. I would personally stick to one table per terrain unless there's something distinct about a certain area or the areas are far apart. There are only so many monsters per terrain that you can use within your CR range if just going by the bestiaries, even with templates.

This page has links to monster lists by CR and terrain. Unfortunately there isn't an overlapping list, so you'll have to pick one criteria then go through finding monsters that fit the other. If that sounds like too much work, this page has pre-made tables by terrain AND CR, but the selections aren't as varied as making your own. Good luck and have fun!

Name: Doran Muka
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Drunken Master Monk 13
Adventure: War of the River Kings
Location: Northwestern hex in the Glenebon Uplands
Catalyst: Engaging the enemy alone
The Gory Details: Thanks to hero points this is our first real death. While exploring the new map the PCs rolled a random encounter. I rolled up what the encounter would be and got "2d6 worgs". To me, the fact that the table even had an encounter from book 2 was ridiculous, so I changed it to 2d6 elder worgs and rolled an 8. The set up was that they were riding through a valley between hills when they spot worgs, four on top of either hill. The worgs were forty feet away, but that was nothing for the monk, so Doran decided to engage alone. This was after the oracle managed to damage three and blind two of those three, so they figured it shouldn't be that hard to take them out. That might have been the case had the first worg not tripped him when it successfully landed a bite. The second worg also landed its bite. The third worg missed since it was blinded but somehow the fourth managed to land a hit for over thirty points of damage. Since they were Power Attacking the damage was 2d6+22 each time. Doran didn't stand a chance and, sadly, died.

On the bright side we're all excited for the player's new character: an awakened kiwi Mesmerist.

Something interesting happened in my last campaign. Party started normally, except two people were neutral evil and everyone else was neutral. The moral compass of the party left the game, so the party just slowly fell more and more into evil. Thing is, they worked well together. They genuinely liked each other. One was just a power-hungry mage (who later became a lich), another was completely motivated by money, then there was a demon-hunting anti-paladin, and a neutral barbarian who just went along with everything. They would save a village and rob it blind at the same time. They'd torture, murder, and made deals with devils. And they had a blast the whole time. Evil characters in good parties can work, but if everyone's on the same page then I think that's when it works best. Like people have been saying, you can still do the right things as an evil person, just for the wrong reasons, so evil parties can totally work and still have a traditional adventure.

My players finally got to kingdom building and after literally hours of debating settled on Recettear. When I asked them if they were going to name their castle, however, that took no time at all. They of course built around the Stag Lord's fort, so they immediately agreed on the name "Stag End".

Stag End on Stagshot Row.