Souls At War's page

Thinking of it, I feel an archeological campaign is extremely problematic due to the links to RL practices in the tomb-exploring/raiding field.

Pathfinder APs usually have little problems with tomb raiding, granted, there are quite a few in verse reasons to be careful with that.

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

Ianesta wrote:

You’ve also got the underground oceans and seas to consider. Maybe the impact caused a shift and led to more water coming up.

Opening communication between surface and subsurface oceans would cause the surface oceans to drain down, unless the caverns containing the subsurface oceans were squeezed shut so as to force water up.

I think basically you've got to run with "it's a fantasy world" and not think to closely about the geology or physics of it all.

In setting this is pretty much the case already with a connection between a subsurface ocean and a surface one.

My theory;

If large masses of land, such as Azlant, Bakrakhan, etc. sank into the sea, that would displace an equal amount of water, which would rise and cause coastal flooding or whatnot.

And, of course, it's also a fantasy world, so even ignoring water displacement, something fantastic might have happened, like the impact blasting open a temporary portal to the Plane of Water or something.

Plot twist! There's still some Marids pissy about Golarion 'stealing' some of their elemental territory, and they want it back, and are working on a giant ritual to suck Golarion's oceans into the plane of Water (all of Golarion's oceans, they are charging interest on the water 'stolen' and the exact amount is... complicated, but all of Golarion's oceans should just about cover it!).

But water displacement should be a fine enough explanation. Save the elemental water bit for a conspiracy theory espoused by some particularly petulant water genie who primarily wants to extort Golarion for something cool to not go through with this cataclysmic ritual.

I also thought of the laws of physics like Matter/Water Displacement.

the aquifiers thing wouldn't add water, but can cause lands sinking even without raising sea level and the effects stack.

vyshan wrote:

keftiu wrote:

I'm still hungry for the "tiny Kingmaker" experience of building a settlement up from almost nothing.

I quite like that idea. I wonder where might be the most interesting to do this?

Well, you'd probably want to avoid the River Kingdoms, so not to step on Kingmaker's toes. But I don't think there's a whole lot of other "Wild Frontiers" in the setting, aside from maybe Azlant, which has been done a couple times already.

If you wanna stay relatively small, I could see setting up a new Point Of Light somewhere in Varisia. Maybe a new settlement in the deserts of Kelesh or in the Grass Sea of Casmaron.

If you want to go for a "little fish in a very big pond" vibe, I could also see running a trading or research post out in the Vlashmai Jungle -- Kaiju thundering just past -- or even setting up communities in the newly emerged Elemental Planes of Wood or Metal.

Or a nation needs a new settlement build somewhere for some reasons.

and/or "but you were supposed to only build a watch tower and a tiny barracks."

I like the idea of a werecreature AP. It’s an obvious box of tropes and i’m unsure why it hasn’t been done before now.

Probably for similar reasons we don't have a Nature vs Civilization/Exploitation one, plus its own reasons.

polymynia wrote:

no actual concrete plan, discussion of what is actually being discussed, or why this was actually decided in the first place

Ok, I gotta ask... Why do you think you're entitled to this information? As far as I can tell, you're not a Paizo employee, so why do you or any customer for that matter, need to know what discussions they're having, their timelines, their negotiations with their vendors, etc? This is not the kind of information that companies release to the public so I'm struggling to understand what you think you're owed here.

Paizo relies on customers money, which also mean they need customers, and customers don't like being screwed over for "no reason" (and/or poorly explained ones).

Paizo needs to learn the differences between wanting to say something and needing to say something, and the differences between wanting to say X, but needing to say Y.

Also should consider better timing for announcements and avoid pilling things up.

I suspect the term "Inner Sea War" has either been supplanted by "Hellfire Crisis" or refers to a larger period of war/political upheaval that will continue beyond the end of the Hellfire Crisis itself.

Kind of my point(s):

Hellfire Crisis doesn't really scream "Inner Sea War"

We know there are seeds for multiple conflicts in the Inner Sea, hence the possibility that it should be "Inner Sea Wars" (plural).

"Inner Sea War" (singular) could be something that will happen once the smaller ones are more or less 'resolved' and/or one (or more) of them snowball into a larger one.

Could simply be a case of "because it sounds cool".

The main Pathfinder setting is the "Inner Sea Region" which includes more things than the actual inner sea (like Varisia, the Mwangi Expanse, and the River Kingdoms.)

I think we're specifying "inner sea war" since we're not going to be paying close attention to whatever conflicts break out in Casmaron or Arcadia (which probably also had warshards land there.)

That section deals with the parts of the conflict on (and under) the Inner Sea itself.

I know, and it seems like you guys misunderstood the question.

Hmm, trying to make sense of one thing with "Inner Sea War", war is singular there, but Cheliax isn't the inner sea... so "Inner Sea Wars" or a bigger one will happen when the smaller ones get "resolved"?

Getting Shelyn past a certain level of drunkenness is a bad idea.

Many of the Elder Gods and Outer Gods can use Toon Force if they want or need to.

(related) Azathoth thinks this is how the laws of physics work by default, no one want to correct him out of pity, because they think this is funny or a mix of both, and because he would forget quickly anyway.

Also, why a flat 10$ to all? Adventures (128 pages) will now be more than half the price of Adventures (256 pages).

The announcement is rather "last minute".

and +1 for wanting justifications if this affect older products.

Cheliax has always been poorly written IMO. The Big A is not stupid he would never put up with stupid people running his foothold in the Material Plane but time and time again Cheliax is written as if totally stupid inept people are running it. It would only take a bit of good writing to make Cheliax a good bad guy if the goody to shoes always beats the evil bad guy without any true resistance what's the point of having a bad guy to begin with? There are worse bad guys to fight TB is much worse and more dangerous to the world order than Cheliax ever could be.

Cheliax should crush Andoran in a war they have about even sized populations and Cheliax can call whole armies of devils to supplement their army. If Andoran left their boarders in large numbers TB would swoop in and have human snacks of the old and infirm. The whole of the Inner Sea should unite and eliminate TB then settle other wars.

Someone did already point out that Asmodeus doesn't want escalations of literally divine proportions.

But yeah, AP wise Cheliax has the poorest track record for consistency. Could be one of the out of verse reasons for the Hellfire Crisis.

Also there's at least 3 races, Barathy, Contemplative, and Dragonkin that have innate fly speeds for characters.

So no reason to restrict it for the afrementioned Sprite, Strix, or Awakened Animal.

Maybe add a restriction that flight with anything more than negligible weight is limited to 5 minutes, and add a higher level feat that removes that restriction. Makes it less narratively jarring for people that expect bird people to be able to fly.

Awakened Animals would already have some restrictions with how they are supposed to attack, same can be said for Were-creatures in animal form, so added restrictions feel a bit off for them.

I've read (altho not run) Hell's Vengeance, and I think one of the main issue is that the player start as mook that have to obey and grovel before their boss and remain just servant of people more powerfull than them for most of the early modules. Having the PC be just mook for someone else that have to obey is always a hard sell, especially when that someone isn't meant to be likable. It does perfectly fit the "lawfull evil" setup, but I don't think it's a kind of evil (or even of lawfull evil) that's particularly appealing to players.

People weren't interested in playing Saturday Morning Cartoon Villains' dumb henchmen. And unlikable allies tend to be a staple in APs.

The issue with evil adventures in a setting with (at least to some extent) objective morality is that actually good foes are going to be sympathetic and altruistic, not overbearing hypocrites like the "awful good" stereotype. And the old Lantern Bearers (the Winter Council in particular) in Second Darkness are not actually good (neutral at best, with a leaning toward "the ends justify the means"*).

For a campaign that allows proactive evil PCs, good enemies will likely be a rarity or at most opponents that need to be defeated for specific objectives.

*- which can be a dangerous road to travel

It has always been rather hard to write Good aligned NPCs well.

Most of HV Good guys weren't that sympathetic.

The thing about evil adventures is that if you make them reactive there's no problem, but if you make them proactive, people will almost certainly complain, except in obscure areas of Golarion. You're not going to have an AP adventure in Molthune where it conquers Nirmathas because people would say "what about Ironfang Invasion?" (even if Oprak is the enemy in that ap). The same goes for Ravounel, Korvosa, Sandpoint, or any place where AP PCs (not module PCs, since there seems to be more flexibility there) have been; people would complain. You already had people complaining about the Hellknights taking over Hellknight Hill for a week or two in a Society scenario; imagine that, but multiply it by 10. I'd like to see proactive evil adventures myself, but it doesn't seem like that's going to be the case, and eventually you'll have places where you can only have reactive adventures (look at Varisia). So yeah, PCs working for evil organizations can work; they just need to be shown a little respect, that is all. In Second Darkness, you have the Lantern Bearers, who are infamous in my opinion for being a "good" organization (in the sense that you have to help them no matter what, and the drow are obviously the bad guys), but then they're xenophobic jerks to non-elves. How many parties have told them "well, see you later" and had to either create elf characters or not continue the campaign? Interesting thought.

Hell's Vengeance was reactive most of the time and many saw it as a problem, for the first two books most of the "Evil" the PCs do is related to working for an evil boss, unless they are carrying the self-defence in evil ways.

Souls At War wrote:

There is interest from players in Evil scenarios/APs, the main lack of interest is from GMs and writers.

Paizo has released deliberately "evil scenarios/APs," as well as ones that can accommodate a party of evil PCs, in the past: Kingmaker AP (can accommodate), Serpent's Skull AP (can accommodate), Reign of Winter AP (can accommodate), Hell's Vengeance AP (deliberately evil), Strange Aeons AP (can accommodate), Emerald Spire (can accommodate), Fists of the Ruby Phoenix AP (can accommodate), Outlaws of Alkenstar AP (can accommodate), Blood Lords AP (deliberately evil), Gatewalkers AP (can accommodate), and Myth-Speaker AP (can accommodate).

The ones that require a party of evil PCs are less popular (sell fewer copies and make less money) than those that can accommodate evil PCs or have the PCs as heroic/good people battling evil foes. Yes, "there is interest" for "evil scenarios/APs;" but less interest than for good or neutral ones.

I did mention less interest from GMs (as opposed to players) and writers...

Being "locked" into being bandits is a hard sell for an AP, since evil scenario aren't that popular, however one way to do it while accomodating the groups that don't want to be evil would be a sort of treasure hunt. Where the PC learn of the existence/location of something very valuable, and retrieving the shinies is the main motivation of the adventure (which could mean that the adventure is a heist if it's in a urban setting, or an expedition for a wilder one). Where the "villain" of the AP is either whatever is keeping the treasure, or another rival group that set up to do the exact same thing as the party (or both).

This kind of setup accomodate a group of greedy pirate or bandit PC, while not completely closing the door on good characters that might want to use the money for something more noble than simply to get richer.

I think serpent skull tried to do this, but the 6 module format forced the story to become bigger than that by the end, while also having the issue of early mwangi... not being the best, and the classic issue of mismatched expectation with the player guide not advertising the fact that the core of the adventure was going to be a treasure hunt all that well.

There is interest from players in Evil scenarios/APs, the main lack of interest is from GMs and writers.

True for Serpent's Skull, Player Guide did warn it wouldn't be a nautical adventure, but had some issue with the rest.

and I'm following your lead, I'm just reverse the cause and effect. They are not adventurers because they can't fly, they can't fly because they are adventurers.

That still silly.

Jim Butler wrote:

Store Launch Update : We are delaying the launch of the new store due to two issues we’ve found. We expect this work will take 2-3 days to resolve and test, so that means we will be going dark at 8 a.m. on Monday, November 10th. We will update the blog with this latest information.

-Jim

It is better to be late and bug free than on time and buggy. Do what you need to with our support.

This also dodge doing a big update right before street release date, something that didn't go well in the past.

2 days before street release date.

Not this [bleep] again!

Coffee, energy drinks, meds, etc for the tech team better be on the house.

Honestly, I've always thought that war as we think of it/historical know it wouldn't exist in a world with D&D and Pathfinder style magic.

I would honestly expect a lot of magic fueled assassination attempts and sabotage taking place via a small number high level agents. The logistic of moving hundreds of men is challenging...why bother when you can send 5 through a magic portal to cripple a city's infrastructure and stop them from producing things to continue the war.

While Golarion has high magic, that high magic is very "concentrated" in a small number of people. I don't think there is any kind of widespread magical transportation system getting large quantities of people between places similar to a railway system.

the Magic thing is concentrated, thus "rare", but it is usually well known and countermeasures do exist, and Magic doesn't come with infinite uses.

But maybe we should avoid derailing the thread further.

Come to think of it, does PF2/PF2R have rules for buying/renting properties, cost of living, building/maintaining infrastructures, etc?

I'm actually very fond of the lore explanation given for Awakened Animals - the process of awakening and gaining entirely new mental faculties sometimes scrambles old instincts that you never had to think about before, particularly for flying creatures who used to rely on a lot of unconscious factors to control their flight. They can still fly, but it takes some work to regain full control.

But that kind of things wouldn't apply well to Were-Bats, Were-raptor, and many ancestries with flight... and it get harder to justify when a race has other balancing factors.

Yes, but publishing them over 3 or 6 months does not force them to spread the writing over 3 or 6 months. They could theoretically write it in exactly the same way they will be going forward, and then just hold onto the later parts for longer.

Books 5 and 6 were often still being written when book 1 was sent to the printers, so...

One other possibility is that multiple authors could better divide their areas of expertise.

-snip-

And page count would be easier, too. Currently, all three modules in an adventure path have the same length. But with all three in a single book, the length could vary. If the middle 2nd-module section needs to run long to tell its story well, cuts could come out of the 1st module or 3rd module rather than the 2nd module to fit the page count.

Two pretty good points, and they can be combined too.

Flying ancestries in PF2 are tricky mechanically, as permanent flight is a rather high level ability. The 1/5/9 Featline is a elegant solution from the mechanical point of view.

However, a recent discussion about the flight feats made me realize it does cause a disconnect between NPC and PC of the same ancestries:
- A Level 2 Strix NPC can fly.
- A Level 2 Strix PC can barely "jump good".
PC's can't fly, when seemingly everyone else can.

There is the whole thing about "game balance", then the "NPCs use different rules than the PCs" thing, Howl of the Wild also has that kind of thing, and not just for flight.

I agree that having lore reasons could be nice.

It should also translate to better internal communications to make sure everyone is on the same page, and better continuity.

Should also help (more) when crap happen, like someone having to leave the project, an author having severe Blank Page Syndrome, etc.

Souls At War wrote:

It's worse for Hell's Vengeance than other APs.

Why is that? Because the PCs are evil?

Mainly that, yes.

Souls At War wrote:

Phantom Genius wrote:

Three weeks without a peep. Is this not an interesting AP?

Almost everyone want to play in it, but unfortunately, pretty much no one wants to run it.

That's going to be the case for any AP.

It's worse for Hell's Vengeance than other APs.

Apart from some early growing pains as the AP writers adjusted to PF2, the biggest issues I've run into with APs seem to have stemmed from the limitations of the monthly format- bases and locations getting discarded because they weren't ready for the next author, abrupt shifts in tone or theme, important details not getting to the GM until it's too late, that sort of thing. APs are still going to frequently be multi-author, so I don't expect all the wrinkles to be ironed out, but I'll be happy to see the shift in action eventually.

Some of us already pointed out it should help with internal consistency, and hopefully avoid what happened in Council of Thieves, Serpent's Skull and a few others.

Three weeks without a peep. Is this not an interesting AP?

Almost everyone want to play in it, but unfortunately, pretty much no one wants to run it.

We calling them Adventure Modules now?

Many already referred the regular Adventures as "Modules".

Might also help with future changes to the site, store and subscriptions.

So at this month's paizo live on twitch, paizo announced that they are changing from monthly releases to quarterly releases. and instead of 3, 4, or 6 books for an AP they will be 1 single volume together.

I honestly quite like this change.

Which technically could mean that books might switch from 3, 4, 5 or 6 parts "more easily".

Ah, that the coherence of APs will now be easier to manage, it should also be easier to release pawns once more for each AP :)

Internal coherence/consistency (writers) and

I think this is purely a positive change! It’s not like anyone realistically should have been starting an AP before the whole thing was released anyway. The only downside I can think of is that there’s now more of a wait in between APs, but the logistical problems this solves as well as the cohesion it allows across an entire AP more than makes up for that.

external coherence/consistency (Game Masters, Players)

In the stream today they mentioned we are getting a hardcover complimation next year!

This?

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Like a normal AP does not really delve into the sheer amount of murder (or manslaughter), breaking and entering, assault, theft, etc. committed by the PCs. So I'm not sure we're going to dwell overmuch on war crimes.

Like there's not a significant difference between "kill all the bandits and take their stuff" and "kill all the enemy combatants and take their stuff" except for the fact that a state military might have better stuff to take.

Well, bandits IME ambush PCs and attack first. Which then makes it self-defense on the PCs part.

But what about the cases where the bandits simply have something the PCs need? PCs are still encouraged to simply slaughter them, because "bandits". Now, if what is needed is the base/headquarter...

1) How resistant are the Hellknights to this power grab/consolidation? I imagine they're too useful a narrative tool to disband, but they might lose some zing if they're merely government enforcers. Splitting them into...good & bad?...traditional vs. subverted? Well, splitting them would enable some PC interplay with them re: internal tensions, but that could be semi-literally bargaining with (against?) the devil, choosing the lesser evil.

2) How will Golarion's religions align in this? Can't imagine Druids happy with any sort of warfare tearing through their land whatever the cause. And will all this warfare (trauma/blood/anger/etc.) spark a new religion or birth/return/augmentation/transformation of a deity?

3) Also seems there will be a lot of odd bedfellows with PCs working alongside enemy countries from former APs/PFS scenarios. It might be interesting if neither good/Holy nor evil/Unholy won, rather some lesser evil factions reach compromises (with perhaps seeds of purer evil spawned by the war's physical and metaphysical aftermath.) Hmm.

1) a point that got brought up a lot in the past ~20 years, wonder if this will get answered.

2) good question about Deities old and new alike, in Hell's Vengeance, even Cayden decided not to touch it with a proverbial ten feet pole.

3) Very good question, and pretty much the (original) subject of the thread.

Like a normal AP does not really delve into the sheer amount of murder (or manslaughter), breaking and entering, assault, theft, etc. committed by the PCs. So I'm not sure we're going to dwell overmuch on war crimes.

Like there's not a significant difference between "kill all the bandits and take their stuff" and "kill all the enemy combatants and take their stuff" except for the fact that a state military might have better stuff to take.

That's more or less my mantra on the subject too.

or:

Given all we heard about PCs and war recently, I am pretty sure there will be no war crimes (as we define it IRL) on the PCs' side, no matter how unrealistic this is.

Might simply be the case.

Perfnord wrote:

Question about the Keeper of Ancorato:

it has the ability Bond with Mortal, is the intention that it does this with the whole party if they pass the test?

"After making this promise, the Keeper establishes a special bond with the entire party and grants them the gift as noted below."

Is the special bond here the BwM? Or do they only get the listed boons in the Reward section?

If they get the BwM the ability says it only works with one person. So one PC?

Or none?

I just gave them the special bond (boons in the reward section w/ edicts and anathema), not the whole Bond with Mortal from the stat block. Granting a +2 status bonus to attack and damage and 20 extra hit points to any one party member is already really unbalanced and doing it to the whole party will definitely adjust a lot of the CR math. The text notes that the Keeper is weak, so I assumed the intent was for the whole party to get the special bond as a lesser form of connection. Using Bond with Mortal would also make the Keeper more vulnerable. We know it wants to end the Shadow and needs help to do it, but probably wouldn't place itself in a compromised position especially when they don't even know yet what's causing the problem.

The AP like putting the PCs on a timer often enough that the boon is kind of a mercy.

Yes, but what narrative gain is there in the AP itself encouraging the removal of those moral restrictions? There are already many amoral/gray-moral APs where GMs can allow this at the table level w/o disrupting the story. I think Paizo would lose more tables than it gained were they to require removing moral restrictions in a storyline.

By asking for an explicitly Evil AP, do you want to see PC-cannibalism featured as per your example? What evil deeds should Paizo showcase if Blood Lords and the current evil adventures are too tame? How palatable could that even be?

This is probably part of why they picked Cheliax for an Evil AP, to use/keep the leash of Law.

And it does seem like we are more or less talking about the same thing, disrupting the story's flow/pace vs potentially disrupting the story's direction, the latter being subjected to loose goals/objectives vs strict goals/objectives.

Souls At War wrote:

Castilliano wrote:

And why couldn't you have? (Especially unwittingly.)

What would (expected) cannibalism add to an AP?

For II, would help with resources.

And part of the point being that not all Evil acts are selfish and/or destructive.

Those answers don't seem to match my questions.

snip

The initial point was about why Evil PCs are frowned upon, someone mentioned destructive/disruptive "chaotic evil" types, then I mentioned that from a writer/dev PoV, Evil PCs might not be hampered by moral restrictions like Good and Neutral ones should.

And why couldn't you have? (Especially unwittingly.)

What would (expected) cannibalism add to an AP?

For II, would help with resources.

And part of the point being that not all Evil acts are selfish and/or destructive.

Walkena got stronger because of the Godsrain and used it to strengthen his army according to War of Immortals.

And his problems could be similarly empowered.

Granted, maybe he is meant to somewhat become an equivalent of the Whispering Tyrant in Garund.

What kind of evil things do you want your PCs to do? (or get away with)

And why can't your PCs do those in the morally gray APs?

Not that I think an evil AP has enough market value, and may even lose Paizo more subscribers than it gains. And to be Evil-Evil Paizo would have to break its PG-13 standards which I don't foresee given how much they have to finesse hard topics already.
A hard-R module might be more reasonable, or optional path/alliance w/ evil faction within an AP w/ sidebars guiding GMs. They've done that in PF1 APs & PFS1 one-shots.

Potential example: in Ironfang Invasion, convert the other refugees to cannibalism, wittingly or not, it's evil but can still increase the chances of survival.

Souls At War wrote:

Problem with Evil PCs would be that they are unbothered by moral choices.

Now, the issues with the players of Evil PCs on the other hand.

That's a succinct way to sum up how difficult it can be to write for evil PCs; if there's no moral compass, what's guiding them? Any "free to be evil" AP might actually be more limiting because the party would need a different overriding reason to risk their lives or even bond together (and with such dubious folk at that!). If they're all greedy, power-hungry backstabbers or in a literally cutthroat community, that's self-destructive.

Freedom of choices isn't freedom of consequences from said choices, and Evil doesn't need to be self-destructive either.

Souls At War wrote:

Problem with Evil PCs would be that they are unbothered by moral choices.

No.

You're describing Chaotic/Neutral Evil to put it in a D&D/PF1E perspective.

Lawful Evil definitely is not that way. They have rules. Sticking to the rules IS a moral choice for them.

A Merciless Meritocracy definitely makes moral choices even if it's mostly at the expense of chaos.

Ethic vs Moral.

Trouble with playing evil PCs is that a lot of evil actions require punching down, navigating real world trauma, or harming good people that the players (hopefully) empathize with. Even by working for an evil organization, the PCs would be empowering that. That's all awkward for an immersive game. It's one thing to read about/watch American Psycho or Hannibal, but such roles are taxing on actors (and many in the audience). How many tables want to gamble that all of their players will be comfortable with whatever evil deeds the scenarios require? And that's not counting those (of which I've GMed a few) that see such license as excuse to indulge in atrocious behavior beyond the story's parameters. (There's a reason PFS had to remove Torture as a profession for one's day job.)

Problem with Evil PCs would be that they are unbothered by moral choices.

Now, the issues with the players of Evil PCs on the other hand.

Yeah, Gorum seems to be about 'war to feel alive!' and Szuriel is all about 'war to make people dead!'

Totally diff vibes, IMO.

(Weirdly, Urgathoa had War in PF1, and her whole schtick seemed to be 'leave me alone to eat and party and be a complete hedonist,' and even read like she found Pharasma hating her to be not really terribly interesting enough to 'hate her back.' Just too darn selfish and self-centered to take seriously or give serious thought to gods who thought they were her nemeses! Seems to be a theme for the necro clique. Geb was kind of same way, at times. "The Knights of Ozem? Never heard of them. But they attacked me, I guess I will punish them *spectacularly,* and then, never give them another thought...")

I could definitely see Lamashtu taking that ball and running with it. She's already got gnolls, minotaurs and hobgoblins (as well as goblins and bugbears) among her more fighty followers, and probably a fair number of ogres as well.

And then there's Moloch. He's totally ripe for being a guiding principle behind legions of soldiers in places like Molthune, Isger, Cheliax and even Oprak or Druma! Sort of a 'god of the army man' like Anhur was in Egypt, or Mithras in Rome, super-popular with the military, with priests marching with the troops, practically unknown to the urban civilian who doesn't have military experience or close kin in the army.

More a god of professional soldiers than screaming bloodthirsty barbarians, tho.

Kinda reminds me we could use a bit more deities of battles/combats/fights than conflicts/wars

As long as paizo is careful about which it favour and how much.

I do think that Paizo should probably keep it on a separate forum. Or at least require "paid" in the post title. I've read a few games and started getting interested to find the buried lede that it was a paid game.

Society Play had a similar issue around the time things shifted from many people thinking Society Play was unwelcome in PbP/online campaign to many people thinking PbP/OC was exclusively for Society Play.

I want to look at the economics of this.

-snip-

This is similar to a trend I am seeing in my LFGS (Local Friendly Game Store). Several stores in my area are now charging a per-table fee for RPG gamers. Not all are. As opposed to card-flippers, which tend to bring in lots of income to a store, dice-rollers tend to have their costs outside the store (dice, minis, paid online character systems like Pathbuilder). They don't really make up the lost opportunity cost through selling sodas and candybars. So, it is understandable they want to charge for taking up space in their store. While I personally do not attend at a paid table store, it is understandable and reasonable that such exist. And, this may be the way things will move in the future.

You do bring a good point about the availability of physical space for offline games.

There is also some people who might turn a hobby into a secondary or even main source of incomes.

Kinda glad if optimization become more optional than mandatory.

for Easy vs Hard, a few things/variations to think about:

- Level of optimization and synergy or lack thereof.
- Number of PCs (already mentioned).
- Relation to the Random Numbers God.

How are area D and area E connected? text doesn't say much, and the map for area D doesn't show any.

Perpdepog wrote:

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

Stepping into the Doylist perspective for a moment, it WOULD be kind of cool if Paizo decided to shake up not just their status quo, but the fantasy RPG status quo in general by having Asmodeus dethroned in their version of Hell as a way of making it more distinct from its predecessor (which is so entrenched in the RPG-playing public's consciousness that people STILL call it "the Nine Hells" when playing Pathfinder even though that hasn't been the case in the actual text for YEARS)!

You're referring specifically to the name "The Nine Hells," right? Not the actual number of distinct zones? Just double checking that I didn't miss some shakeup to the layout of Hell in PF's cosmology, somehow.

Yeah, just the name. It just bugs me when I'm playing Pathfinder and a player character says "Hells!" or "What in the Hells?" due to this cultural inertia. This isn't Forgotten Realms! Similar to how it annoys me when someone says they'll stay behind to "hold down the fort." The fort is not a bouncy castle filled with helium! It's just "hold the fort!" It's a military metaphor!

"Holding down the fort" sounds like a mix of "hold the fort" and "holding the enemies down" which tend to be used instead of "holding off".