Souls At War's page

You're not having them earn income every week?

Even without earning income, my party (I'm the GM) has more than WBL tables suggest anyway. I did find Quest for the Frozen Flame to be lacking, but that was more about the type of AP it is (survival, really).

There are APs where rolls can wildly influence wealth.

I did suggest they earn income, but all but 1 pc scoffed at the idea. /shrug.

More and more it sounds like the AP simply isn't for them.

Edit: reading some of your other posts/threads, their issues could be with PF2e.

Thread kind of reminds me of the issues people had with Bastards of Golarion, and to a lesser extent, Blood of the Beast.

Souls At War wrote:

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

Souls At War wrote:

Thanks and goodwill only go so far, especially when being a one way thing, gratitude won't put food on the table most of the time.

Well that's... that's actually kind of exactly how it worked in premodern villages and small towns. I get what you're saying, but as it happens, the network of gratitude and reciprocity is what put food on the table when you had a bad harvest. You banqueted your neighbours when you had surplus and they returned the favour.

Yeah, but in most RPGs, reciprocity isn't always there.

Can be a problem if the PCs are paid in thanks, but have to pay stuff in money, granted, non-monetary rewards could also be used. Barter is something else than just gratitude.

I get what you are saying, but none of the activities (like getting crops, fixing the teahouse, etc.) cost the PCs anything. The most anything costs the PCs is if they want to be a 4gp or 40gp teaset - which the inventor they have in the party can actually make. And even this is optional.

Not the part I was thinking about in that particular post, was more talking about buying things; food, healing, spellcasting, other services... so if they are paid in thanks, but they have to pay with money.

Also, it can be useful to be open about the whole "resources" thing this AP has with the players.

Souls At War wrote:

Thanks and goodwill only go so far, especially when being a one way thing, gratitude won't put food on the table most of the time.

Well that's... that's actually kind of exactly how it worked in premodern villages and small towns. I get what you're saying, but as it happens, the network of gratitude and reciprocity is what put food on the table when you had a bad harvest. You banqueted your neighbours when you had surplus and they returned the favour.

Yeah, but in most RPGs, reciprocity isn't always there.

Can be a problem if the PCs are paid in thanks, but have to pay stuff in money, granted, non-monetary rewards could also be used. Barter is something else than just gratitude.

Thanks and goodwill only go so far, especially when being a one way thing, gratitude won't put food on the table most of the time.

There is also the risk vs reward part, if doing something cost more resources for the PCs than they get in return, they might be bothered by this. Part of this might be bad luck with dice rolls.

It can also be useful to tell the players ahead of time that they are expected to spend a lot of resources, and as a GM to remember they will need said resources.

There is also a possibility that this AP simply isn't for them.

Souls At War wrote:

Kinda reminds me, I would like a good explanation on how the Lumber Consortium has that much power.

I am curious to hear Paizo's explanation. But my explanation is simple, they have a monopoly over lumber products. This includes firewood and charcoal from wood. So if someone wants to heat their home, they buy lumber from the consortium, if someone wants to cook, they buy lumber from the consortium, if someone wants a hot bath, they buy lumber from the consortium, if they want to rebuild anything from their wood home, they buy lumber from the consortium.

So this grants them a whole lot of power, even if people don't like them and are corrupt and greedy and do vile stuff, politicians going against them have to deal with the fact that they have levegered this into power.

The Lumber Consortium is a holdover from Old Cheliax, when some amount of corruption was de rigeur, IIRC they were on the outs with the old Government so they prolonged their power by throwing their weight behind the new Independent Andoran Government, so that the latter felt like they owed the former a favor or two.

That and the fact that Andoran's foreign policy is predicated by "we're a naval power" so they need a lot of wood for a lot of ships. Since they've been preparing for a new war with Cheliax for a while, any action that resulted in "less access to ships, shipbuilding, and lumber" would be disfavored by the Andoran state as it would make them temporarily less ready for that war.

That would help explain quite a few things, including how they can keep powerful beings and organizations at bay.

For Andoran I would love to see more of the political factions and organizaitons. Major guilds have a seat in the People's Council. Also how council districts are drawn and chosen. The Lumber consortium is a big one but there should be others.

Kinda reminds me, I would like a good explanation on how the Lumber Consortium has that much power.

We need a proper villains campaign where we actually fight angels, heralds of good deities and their champions, not villain vs villain again

And being proactive instead of being on the defensive.

The point is that Paizo does not know where the boundaries and/or comfort level for specific types of actions lie with your (and every other) group.

Even Hell's Vengeance is fairly well "sanitized" from what it could be.

Aside from the Chelish curse, HV suffered from inverting the roles of heroes and villains, one of the reasons it didn't feel like an Evil AP.

I'm more interested in being in service to evil powers for my own reasons than actually being evil.

Going by old rules, this is pretty much the same thing, especially for PCs.

How will you handle the Caravan stuff?

And you can have a discussion thread in Online Campaingns/Play by Post Discussion, it can automatically(?) be created by selecting the "Discussion" tab at the top of this page.

Edit: ninja'ed

Shay: If I get trampled in the crowds I just want everyone to know: Josh isn’t allowed to have my legos

Josh: Not even the cool spaceship ones?!

Why do I imagine the following would be: "Shay: Especially the cool spaceship ones." ?

I think Ragathiel "swapping" is now more unlikely than ever. Even if Ragathiel as "good" was kinda debatable, he was a bit too extreme and I can see how it felt weird for one like him to be considered "cosmically good", he absolutely picked a side in the war between holy and unholy, and it sure wasn't the unholy side. I feel like Ragathiel is an incarnation of the "angel going overboard in their crusade to smite all evil" trope, and that despite the edge and possible moral dubiousnes of such character, they can't not be holy.

it's one of the case where I feel like calling these side "holy and unholy" instead of good and evil actually enrich the world, because it allow for less than ideal divinity or character to be holy as long as they stand against the "unholy" side, and for unholy divinity or character to still show some amount of virtue or moral backbone, as long as they stand against the "holy" side. While before, having a "good" god that was morally not that great felt like a complete oxymoron.

For me I feel the subtle, but critical difference is between the label meaning you are Good, and the label meaning you devote yourself to Good.

Holy still means Good, but if a person who screws up and does something bad has the label meaning "is Good", it creates weird implications/expectations for their actions, but a person who screws up while having the label meaning "devoted to Good", it only means that they didn't quite meet their own standards.

Like, "Good" on the alignment has never really meant "every single action they do is Good", but people tend to expect deities to be held to a higher standard. What's different is not so much that the standards of who does good and who does evil have changed, it's that the way we talk about them has shifted the emphasis away from whether or not they are judged Good to whether or not they're trying to do good.

Or I guess another way of saying it is that Holy is not less than Good, but Good excuses (or seems to) any flaws they have as being also Good unless pointed out (and authorial intent is difficult for some people to read in a 50,000 word novel never mind a 200-word deity description), where Holy only means that they try to be good and if they have flaws, then that just means to err is only divine.

Pretty much what many "Good vs Evil" and Angels vs Demons fictions do, which tend to be a bit more nuanced than some attempts at "objective" good and evil can be.

And related quote:
"Where is your Halo?"
"I'm an Angel, not a Saint."

Yes. The one thing I DON'T want is for the war to kick off and end in the same adventure. Things must change, but a war should take 3+ years to resolve. And Paizo can get feedback from the community before deciding where to go to resolve the war. I feel strongly that Geb is the more interesting faction to ally with, because I want to fight the horrors and mages of Nex more than more undead again.

Let the good vs. evil fight against undead campaign be against Tar-Baphon. And in Geb we can be the group of adventurers that joins undead.

Useful to remember that some undeads are against Tar-Baphon's plans, especially those who feed on the living, and this is quite divisive in Geb, just not brutally... yet.

Souls At War wrote:

One thing to keep in mind with Civil War AP/Adventure is the question: "which side?", something that might not be easy to answer.

Didn't Paizo pull this off with aplomb in War for the Crown? Moreso than they did with Hell's Rebels/Hell's Vengeance anyway (where they chose to print a whole AP for each "side").

Rebels and Vengeance weren't exactly each other opposite side.

War for the Crown forced the players in a specific faction.

One thing to keep in mind with Civil War AP/Adventure is the question: "which side?", something that might not be easy to answer.

Guessing it isn't a fun time for the Hellknights either, especially for the Pyre, and to a lesser degree, the Rack.

There can also be a question of "want vs need" to a certain degree, Skull & Shackles was made with the PCs needing crews in mind, Jade Regent had the caravan thing, other APs will point out extra hands are more a want, and unfortunately, some APs are not consistent with the question/possibility/intent.

CastleDour wrote:

I would love a full on morally grey or evil AP. Let us work once again for Geb! Or Cheliax. Or Norgorber!

There already was an AP where the party worked for Cheliax, it wasn't very well received. Altho I think the main problem wasn't the fact that it was an evil AP, but rather the fact that the party were minions always taking orders from higher ups and following someone else's will.

The party being henchmen of an NPC is already a hard sell in general, as most player prefer to play independant characters, who may ponctually work for someone but isn't anyone's "employee", but coupled with the evil part, it didn't appeal to a lot of people. I think it's because the peoples interested by the prospect of "playing evil characters" are more interested with the "I get to do whatever I want" aspect of it, which isn't really possible when you're someone else's minion. I think for an evil AP, the party being thieves, bandits, pirate or ruthless treasure hunters (with the motivation of the AP being a big pile of money) would appeal to more people.

Well, the dumb henchmen thing, lots of contradicting / internal consistency issues, something common to many APs with Chelish focus, pretty much inverting the roles of the good and bad guys in the story, etc... the Law vs Law part probably didn't help either.

On another note, it did show some of the issues a Human vs Human war/conflict AP can face

Pfff, while I am, personally, in favour of paying my taxes to the benefit of all those social services above mentioned, it still strikes me as a somewhat funny take that Milani of all deities should care about things like the ability of a state to fund police or military forces or really function. Milani, the (formerly) chaotic good goddess of resisting oppressive, unjust rule.

(I also feel it's a bit weird to assume that guards wouldn't exist without state funding--the people who have the money that needs guarding have the money to fund guards to protect that money, and the people who don't have the money, don't historically benefit all that much from guards existing at all... but the job of the fantasy guard is a lot closer to modern cop than would be good for avoiding political discussion, and I'm not sure a strictly historical discussion of guards is very pertinent to this thread)

The riches having their own private guards and/or army has fantasy and historical precedents.

Hmm, Milani might be the type that ask for transparency on how money is spent before going "screw taxes"

Well, we could always discuss the AP where the PC city guards were not on state salary and were expected to self-fund out of their exploits, would that be better?

Didn't we already (almost) get that one?

Hmm, on topic; evil AP where the PCs are tax/debt collectors. sorry

Kinda interesting that Razmirans' "pretend Arcane/Occult/Primal magic is Divine" thing is kind of the opposite of the "pretend Divine magic is Arcane/Occult/Primal" thing done in Rahadoum.

Which now makes me wonder if a Rahadoumi would fall for a Razmiran's tricks...

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

I've thought a lot about it, and I think it's about time Pathfinder did an AP about the one of the oldest traditions of RPG characters and fantasy protagonists as a whole: committing tax evasion. (Yes, I follow Dave Prokopetz on Tumblr, why do you ask?)

Milani should add Tax Evasion to her portfolio, to the extreme delight of my visionary players.

Taxes are pure oppression. Tax evasion is an act of hope and resistance. Spread the message. Long live Milani

This should be enough to get her a seat in the Core 20.

And now many governments are unable to do anything due to the lack of money.

or in some cases:
"The people of X stopped paying their taxes."
"Hmm, due to, erm, 'budget cuts' we will have stop posting guards and fixing things there."

The problem for players wanting to overthrowing the power of House Thrune in Westcrown in Council of Thieves is that if they succeed in doing so, it will be only extremely temporary, because then Hell's Vengeance just starts early. And from observing a Council of Thieves PbP on these messageboards, I got the impression that this is actually clear even if only implicit.

It is mentioned as a possible course of actions for the post campaign.

GM Cthulhu wrote:

Is it just me or is this module too top heavy with magic loot?

I think the same.

This is pure conjecture...but when this AP was being written most of the Paizo people were deep in the development of PF2. So I suspect that this AP got substandard editing, including matching loot to level.

I'm finding errors in game mechanics, plot holes, etc. all over the place!

Allen

This is one a few APs that assume that the PCs won't have much time/opportunities to go shopping in certain parts, this AP also sort of assume the PCs won't have much time/opportunities to rest during certain parts.

Still a point about resource-intensive classes, granted that some of it can be mitigated by a warning beforehand.

There are also differences between resting to help with fatigue/exhaustion and resting to get dailies back.

keftiu wrote:

This is the appeal of the Stolen Lands in Kingmaker!

It's also something of a polite fiction, as the Sootscales and Hargulka might protest.

In a word, OP, "no." There are many lands of non-state peoples, but there is no such thing as unoccupied land.

The few "unoccupied" ones are that for a reason or two.

Also depends if one want a place for a full nation or something like a city state.

Personally, I actually knew very little about Golarion lore before the event. Like, I knew some about very specific areas and topics, and about a couple major events (like a certain two powerful beings escaping their respective prisons and changing the literal map), but I learned a lot assembling my conspiracy boards. So much effort to be completely wrong. XD

At least you can admit it and not go: "I'm not wrong, it's the Paizo writers who are wrong".

Is it just me or is this module too top heavy with magic loot?

Last session the party beat up three sealbreaker knights, all of whom had +1 full plate, a +1 heavy steel shield and a +1 longsword. That's over 6,000gp of loot per knight. Then the otyughs gave them glove of storing, which contained a scabbard of keen edges, a further 16,000gp worth.

Earlier they were gifted a +2 halberd by Ranton Gandry, Brunna gave them a +2 shield. They beat Kilibrandt and got her +1 shadow studded leather, +1 composite bow, belt of dex +4, and cloak of resistance +2, along with the gear from her hirelings.

And that's not even mentioning the multitude of potions, wands, talismans, etc they keep picking up.

I would suggest reading the whole module, and the beginning of the next one, there is usually a reason for increased loot.

Charles Evans 25 wrote:

I gather from your post that Rovagug's immunity has been discussed in a thread before though. Do you have a link, please, to the thread in question?

Still have to find the blog post commenting on this series being the “safe from death” notices, but the entries can be found here.

and the Which Core Deity will we lose? thread.

If I've got my Grognard Lore right, the Law vs. Chaos stuff could also have its roots in the original AD&D alignments, which were a very Jordan Petersonian "Law" (everything good, pure and Christian things Gygax thought were good and pure) versus "Chaos" (everything evil, pagan and things Gygax thought were bad), with Neutral as the nonsensical, alien, almost subhuman "we fight for balance for its own sake with no real rationale behind it". Alignment got relatively modernized later on, of course, but I'm not sure it ever truly escaped its moral absolutist, ex-Jehovah's Witness roots.

I could also totally have this skewed. I mainly know AD&D from Swords and Wizardry.

Hmm, RuneQuest kinda does this too, then there was D&D 4e, not necessarily for the same reasons.

All this alignments talk reminds me that Law vs Chaos was often the more backgound'ish of the two axis, and often conflated with the other as well.

Minor critics:

Be careful of avoiding inclusion to the point of exclusion, granted that Paizo has been more careful with this since it was pointed out a few years ago.

Equality/balance: might still need some work on the ratio; Lesbians, Bisexuals and Gays, MtF and FtM, background vs foreground.

Other than that, good work on the LGBTQIA+ front.

I think the item should mention the mental changes that occur as well. It’s not just a physical transformation.

Can be complicated by a few things like willingness and personality.

and Achaekek isn't the only deity with contradicting lore, hell, PF1 never really made its mind about Ydersius being quasi-deity, demigod or full deity.

Like my pitch for the "Kill Treerazer" story would be Kyonin getting help from Alkenstar and whoever it is that's smuggling in the Stasian Coils to maintain air superiority and bomb Tanglebriar back into the Age of Darkness.

Since if there was a way the Elves of Kyonin could have done it by themselves, it probably should have been accomplished a while ago. Sitting around letting a nascent demon lord gain more power is not exactly a good idea.

Well, 1) they are trying to save the place, and 2) nuking Tanglebriar would be likely to result in too much collateral damages.

Should be multiple specialist armies, help with different speed, different rolls, etc

So Goku instead of Worf?

Goku would literally wish for beings like Gorum and Rovagug to show up at his doorstep.

those images, especially the spoilered one...

Does it mean Deities can

The version at demiplane doesn't have all the graphics that are in the original. However, you'll have to create an account to read it.

But, as others have noted, this is hardly an AP for those with arachnophobia.

Or phobia of creepy crawlies in general, and their giant versions in particular.

Like the main antagonists for the entire story are ** spoiler omitted ** who rule the area that the story takes place in. There's not a lot to be done about that for people who are absolutely spider-averse. Like the last volume is titled "To Bloom Below the Web".

So if you don't want to encounter spiders or spider-themed things in your RPGs, I would just file this under "this one's not for me."

and someone didn't even read the Player Guide first.

The issue is that Mesoamerican have long been smeared as Devil worshipers who did blood orgy rituals which was far from the truth.

The idea of a pure evil demon lord people worship to cause eternal darkness is also fake b@~+%!%@. Mesoamericans didn’t even have concepts of platonic good or evil.

Even the early frays had a hard time trying to teach the concept of "evil" in mesoamerican society because in nahuatl there isn't a word for "bad", there is only good "cualli" and not-good "ahmo cualli". Someone explained to me this with fruits: the fruit that is still immature is not good "ahmo cualli"; the ripe fruit is good "cualli", while the rotten fruit is not good "ahmo cualli" but neither of those states or phases are inherently "bad", the same applies to anything else, everything has its own time.

After stating this... the divinity that would carry the "evil" concept can be traslated to Tezcatlipoca and even so this god is also a protector of the poor and slaves. Although in modern times the word "chamuco" referring to the devil may have its roots in the god Oxomoco from the primal couple, the ancestors of the humankind.

Word of advise, might be very useful to know when people are talking in-game/in-verse vs real life things, and when things get mixed...

Souls At War wrote:

Eeveegirl1206 wrote:

I really hope that if Lost Omens: Arcadia gets mentioned human sacrifice is never mentioned anywhere in the text.

The practice of human sacrifice in Mesoamerica was a complex history of theological based thought that continued for thosands of years.

It was not grabbing random civilians off the street and cutting their hearts up.

I never understood the idea that human sacrifice was practicality heinous but not killing people for worshipping the same G-D in the slightly different way like what happened in Europe

Arcadia is NOT pre-colonial Americas nor colonial Americas and isn't filled with savages.

The emphatic denial is kind of strange - sure, it isn't exactly the Americas, but we know enough to say it's textually inspired by them the same way Garund is an Africa-equivalent.

EDIT: Not advocating for human sacrifice or labeling anyone 'savages,' to be clear.

Isn't Arcadia kinda more advanced than Avistan.

and someone did point out the Evil cults doing human (and others) sacrifices thing, location be damned.

I really hope that if Lost Omens: Arcadia gets mentioned human sacrifice is never mentioned anywhere in the text.

The practice of human sacrifice in Mesoamerica was a complex history of theological based thought that continued for thosands of years.

It was not grabbing random civilians off the street and cutting their hearts up.

I never understood the idea that human sacrifice was practicality heinous but not killing people for worshipping the same G-D in the slightly different way like what happened in Europe

Arcadia is NOT pre-colonial Americas nor colonial Americas and isn't filled with savages.

I'm someone who likes a lot of different styles of adventures in my campaigns rather than sticking to a single theme the entire time. Stringing together a few shorter APs sounds like a good way to get that variety.

However, I've also grown to like a good thru line. What are people's thoughts on an AP that skips levels. Like, Vol. 1 is levels 1-3, then you do some other adventures before Vol. 2 kicks off at level 8 or something. The whole thing goes to 20, but sporadically.

Something like Eden Odyssey's Wonders Out of Time (for 3.5) if anybody remembers that. It's a favorite of mine.

Kinda highlight one of the issues with 6 parts APs, filling 6 volumes with contents can be difficult.

Fei Sanmi (Human Witch): Daughter of Nadoya Sanmi and older sister of Yuli Sanmi, she is also the physician's apprentice of Dr. Dami. She recently developed magical powers after being gifted a strange cat (her familiar) by the mysterious traveling merchant Shinzo (Folklore Enthusiast background).

Guessing someone is willing to alter the story, backgrounds and rules a bit.

vyshan wrote:

I wonder if there will be a new god of civilization. Since the only thing Abadar cares about and focuses on is basically banking and not all the other community aspects of civilization.

He's also big into building walls/ditches and enforcing fair law. Calling him the banking guy is a fair bit of a reductive take.

Someone need to tell that to his worshipers and clergy, because their memo are listed in alphabetical order and tend to stop at Banking.

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

And now for something completely different...

A hex map of Irrisen! For those GMs whose players choose to place Anastasia on the throne themselves instead of having Baba Yaga do it for them, and want to run a large-scale war against the Irriseni ancien regime (ironic to have a Romanov leading the revolt against any sort of ancien regime, isn't it?) using the Kingmaker/Ultimate Campaign Mass Combat rules.

Looks like it's a broken link. Does anyone have it by chance and can reshare? Thanks.

1) you are replying to /inquiring about an 11 years old post.

2) TinyPic is kinda dead. (not a simple broken link issue)

3) the thread isn't very active, so good luck.

Souls At War wrote:

This thread rekindled a question I had in the past, how would Spider Entothropes interact with Jorogumo?

Probably the same as ratfolk and wererats, or kitsune and werefoxes--on a case by case basis. An ysoki doesn't inherently have any connection between a person who can shapeshift into a rat, and even their hybrid form would probably look uncanny an alien to them. Perhaps not unlike how strange an ysoki were ape might look to a human.

Jorogumo and werespiders are not inherently related beyond being shapeshifters, some of whose forms bear some superficial similarities. My guess is that it would depend upon whether werespiders as a whole tend to have a particular temperament, and whether that behaviour is useful or noisome to a particular culture of jorogumo. Other than that, it depends on the individuals and how their cultures (if any) interact, which I suppose brings you back to the original question, but now with less reason to assume jorogumo have a special relationship with werespiders.

Most of those make sense, yet Werespiders and Jorogumo have a few things in common like the ability to turn into spider (both have a human and spider form) and spider empathy, it's these similarities that make me wonder about their possible interactions.

This thread rekindled a question I had in the past, how would Spider Entothropes interact with Jorogumo?

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

keftiu wrote:

I think the bit where the Good-aligned police are paid under the table to brutalize protesting workers and deliver one of them to the gallows would've been tone deaf no matter when it released... but there's no need to pick at old scabs.

Heh, nice.

But having PCs brutalize striking workers, deputized to the state in one way or another, is time-honored Paizo tradition that plays well with its customer base. It comes up at least in Edge of Anarchy (where it was retained in the Anniversary Edition) and Racing to Ruin; and is at least an option in Breaking the Bones of Hell.

Using the phrase "time-honored" is kinda disingenuous in a case like this. Excluding the fact that not every adventure we write is intended to start from the EXACT same baseline of what is and isn't acceptable for a group, or that we often try to build in alternate ways for groups to solve situations in adventures to account for the fact that some tables prefer different play styles than others, we very much do try to constantly adjust and course-correct choices we've made in the past that might be, years or even decades later, not appropriate story elements in the present.

It's a constant process of adjustment and learning, and believe it or not we do listen to feedback from posts like these, and criticism about things we do when we screw up or mis-step is very important.

But that criticism is easier for us to take and accept and use to make ourselves do better when it's presented in a diplomatic way.

Kinda why I mentioned that Agents of Edgewatch had an unfortunate timing for its release, but at the same time, APs take a while to make.

And unfortunate timings can happen while starting almost any APs/modules/etc as well.

I have a question: This particular book does a pretty poor job of clearly delineating XP, and they are supposed to go from level 4 to level 5 during Part 1 (The Tanager Jubilee). But there doesn't seem to be nearly enough XP during the Jubilee for this to actually happen.

Are there rules for gaining experience for doing the Cults of Personality, Agents of Change phases?

Guessing part of it asumes the PCs are level 4 and already on their way to level 5 at the start.

Souls At War wrote:

Wei Ji the Learner wrote:

From a purely 'meta' perspective, Paizo has been trying to learn lessons from products they release.

((Agents of Edgewatch had HORRIFIC timing with concerns about the conduct of law enforcement, and then some of the tropes the AP covered did not make it any better for most folks as one example.))

Agents of Edgewatch had an horrible and unfortunate timing for its release, the tone-deafness wasn't at the time of its conception.

I think the bit where the Good-aligned police are paid under the table to brutalize protesting workers and deliver one of them to the gallows would've been tone deaf no matter when it released... but there's no need to pick at old scabs.

Not that different from standard AP stuff if you ask me.