Syntaxed's page

Clearly the answer is to delete the forums.

I mean, years of ignoring the people working professionally with them and their experience and expertise, giving the forums no budget, having the people working with them do several other jobs in addition to community work, and constantly berating people by saying that the magic they did manage to make with no budget and resources is a toxic cesspool didn’t work, so there isn’t any other solution than to just delete them.

/sarcasm

Yes, exactly this minus the sarcasm. Just because it is work doesn’t mean it is work worth doing. I fully believe you tried and were setup to fail by lack of support and resources. Anybody who knows or worked with people in CS understands this. Why would you want the next person with your former job to endure this again given this track record?

However, these forums as they exist aren’t promoting what Paizo is good at. Promote the game we play and the products Paizo makes. The rest of this isn’t worth time or investment. I understand this isn’t popular for those so invested in this place, but many seem to have vastly overestimated how important these forums are to people who play the games and buy products. Especially topics unrelated to the products.

With the exception of very small subs and Discord channels (I've had a lot of fun on the FFd20 Discord and the Hajime no Ippo subreddit, for example), they do not foster a sense of community whatsoever.

That's...kind of important when it comes to a social game.

As well, Paizo "taking lessons from the industry leader" would be a laughably bad move for them, for one simple fact: they are not the industry leader. They do not have those fat Hasbro stacks backing them that makes shameless corporate moves work.

Because they're not a major corporation, as much as their responses the past few months have made it apparent they wish they were.

Paizo is a couple of steps away from being White Wolf.

I disagree that Discord doesn't have community. I grew up on IRC, chats, message boards. All of these evolve over time. Forums simply aren't as popular as they used to be and simply aren't worth the cost to keep the garden pristine unless you have people donating their time to do so and even then it would be better as fully off-site, community run.

I don't think you're incorrect as being closer to White Wolf, actually. TTRPG is more of a cottage industry anyway. The likes of the size of WotC and at one point Paizo is an exception, not a rule. I can only tell you my experience at another company who also makes bespoke ElfGames and also had a contentious forum. I think there is a valid lesson to take from what happened there. How often in any media do you ever hear people longing for the WotC forums back, let alone people who knew they existed?

I'd just like to see Paizo be prolific and healthy. Focus on the products and paying their workers for products and community engagement, not forum management.

It’s time for the Paizo Forums to go away and perhaps come back in a new restructured format. We need a reset, to heal, to take a forced beak from all these events - and not just in the past months. This is something that has been brewing for years, festering until it has reached this critical level.

As a personal anecdote, I rarely post any more, driven away by a lot of what I viewed as selective enforcement by previous mods, of vitriol between people I used to game with over differing viewpoints, of simple misunderstandings that became emotionally charged and lines were drawn. It’s pretty sad really, since I miss many a great gamer in these forums and in person, I felt as though I was no longer part of this community. Feeling like an ‘Other’. Aside from the social aspect, this has also affected what I buy from the company, and even though my financial situation never changed, I gradually went from a Superscriber to a nothing scriber.

It’s just from my view, the common decency and shared understanding that the vast majority of Paizonians had as a community is gone. We’ve become needlessly disagreeable, sometimes unknowingly.

There was a time where we could disagree respectfully, even if sometimes it needed clarity. It seems now we expect the worse when people respond to our words. Our defenses are always up, we assume the worse and many times this can cause communication problems between people due to a lack of nuance. It may be the wider influences of our western culture - be it political, social, economic or a myriad of other things changing our landscape today, whatever it is, its infected these forums, and not in a positive way.

We’ve lost much of the decorum in communicating with each other. Disagreeing or having differing opinions has made people the “others” and this is not healthy, it’s not healthy for us as a community or for the employees, nor for the company as an entity. It seems that no one really feels comfortable here any longer. And although some of this may not apply to everyone...

This is a very correct observation and is completely right. The snark-posters being absolutely awful towards you are pretty absurd to see as they prove your point over and over. Thank you for posting something that actually has a solution to the problem.

Paizo, your forums are a mess. Take a look around at this thread and forum for some telling examples.

Your forums should:
-Drive sales
-Enable people to discuss your products
-Engage with announcement about events or things related to the things you’re selling
-Allow for engagement with actually playing your game, such as Pbp

Anything else isn’t needed and such forums as this are a net-negative.

I worked at Wizards when they got rid of the forums. There was the same hemming and hawing about what an awful, terrible, and xyz issue it was to even consider such a thing. Such interesting thoughts doomsaying that Wizards would never recover from such a trove of awesome resources and posters who were Very Important. You know what the feeling was when they finally did it? Relief. They no longer had to have the Sisyphean moderators having to be responsible for monitoring something that provided very little to any positive correlation to revenue or their bottom line. The trolls, bigots, and people who just love to argue had to take their arguments elsewhere. THIS WAS A VAST IMPROVEMENT TO THE COMPANY. The industry leader has shown you the way so take some lessons from those who have way more resources than you do when they saw it was a net-negative to continue such a thing.

Why is the PF2e Subreddit so much better than these forums? Why can I find so much more information in a non-hostile way on Discord? I’d actually rather go to Youtube or Facebook (ugh) and get more information than your own forums with much better moderated content.

I have Discord on my phone. I subscribe to various channels and get more updates from that on the various org play or PF2E servers I’m on than I do the forums here. People don’t use forums. You could delete all but the PbP and Product Discussion/Rules and 99+% of your customers wouldn’t care. Why do you have moderators burning the midnight oil to have them abused day in and day out?

I’m sure the tired argument of “If you don’t like this forum don't come here” will be trotted out. The reason why this doesn’t matter is because Paizo is wasting money and effort probably through just inertia of always having it here. This is money I want to go to the creatives who write/draw/craft the actual product that we come and pay for and what I want to show appreciation for. I want the Union and Paizo to succeed. That starts with removing things that aren't positive to the company or the community. This forum is a great place to start as nothing of value will be lost with stripping them down to the ones that do matter.

Hope you start soon.

I'm not someone who generally hates things, but I vehemently hate the idea of monetizing Nethys. The whole point is it allows everyone playing the game to have access to all of the rules even if they can't afford all of the books.

Introducing monetized paywalls to any free website also NEVER GOES WELL. See Tumblrs thing where they are currently trying to introduce tumblr posts that you have to pay to see, which is driving much of tumblr's already diminished community away.

Fair enough but I’d think something like day-of access and release rest of the rules one month later would get people to pay. Maybe the money can go to keeping the site stable.

In reviewing the posts about razor-thin margins, issues with pay and longevity it got me thinking on ways that Paizo could get more of my cash on things I want, things I see missing, and items I'd have a no-brainer buy. Ideally these would coincide with increased payment to the creatives and team that make the games we all enjoy happen.

Obviously I don't know all of Paizo and their business structure. This is just me as a fan trying to provide feedback of things I'd want. Would love if others would chime in!

Low-effort / High Return

Token Packs for Bestiary 1-3 for VTT.

Why is this not available and for multiple formats such as Roll20, Foundry, Fantasy Grounds on YOUR site so I can buy directly from you?

Even if we don't have an integration, a simple folder with properly labelled files that can be manually imported to anything you want. This is an instant buy and I'd pay at least the Bestiary PDF cost to just get this, even better with an official Foundry module to have it. This one seems like the biggest no-brainer to me. Perpetual need for online DM's who would be more than willing to pay for this for the time it would save.

Token Packs for Adventure Paths

In the similar vein, every adventure path has a Pawn set you can buy physically, why is this not something done for digital? This is another One-and-done type thing that virutal games will buy over and over. Doesn't need to be anything more than the pawns and art which can be imported to your VTT of your choice. You can keep all the profit this way.

PDF-only subscription

Why is there no option for me as a customer to do a PDF only type subscription at a discount of PDF only price?
I did read the FAQ and post from...2011? Post (oh god this was a decade ago)

Can you really say this is still true with shipping costs exploding any longer though? How much is a print sub vs a pdf sub with the costs right now? I'm sure the FAQ post could still be true but things have sure changed recently.

I love the books but honestly I don't want or can't keep them in my house any longer. I typically just buy the PDF adventures as they catch my eye. If you offered this I might consider to subscribe to get them, especially if given earlier than street dates.

Higher Effort or more involvement

Promote Pathbuilder and similar tools as much as you can if you wont have a solution of your own. There is nothing that sells your game better than these tools. Pathbuilder is an amazing tool, it is an absolutely incredible piece of software and should be mentioned all the time by your company in partnership.

Have a character vault type thing for Society where we can actually have our character that has an import function in to various VTT (if they allow it). Expand on digital gaming or do something so the character you have is easily portable to encourage play.

Monetize Nethys site in different ways. Access to certain things, lore, one-time fee to see the latest items on it. There are ways to improve this for people who are willing to pay for additional services.

Proper digital maps / sell your HQ maps in digitial space on your site.

There is constant grumbling about the maps set for print vs set for VTT. Sell special ones for VTT for a premium that have proper spacing and resolution. People will buy it.

Saros Palanthios wrote:

Angel Hunter D wrote:

We dont have a GM here, that entire argument doesn't work.

Are we not all GMs and/or players, here to discuss how to run/play the game properly? Or are we just arguing for argument's sake?

My only point is that saying something like "according to the Rules, only things with the Disrupt tag can possibly disrupt an action, and nothing else can, ever" is idiotic, not least because the same set of Rules explicitly tells you to "work with your group to find a good solution, rather than just playing with the rule as printed".

For the purposes of the rules forum, a rule to houserule, which is what you're citing, is pointless, because it's not an answer to what the rules require. Such discussions belong in advice or general discussion threads. Here the answer is either (1) this is what you do, see pg XXX, or (2) ask your GM, there is no rule.

So a Monk with Stand Still feat has someone move out of the threatened square and they get to take a reaction. In theory the reaction to make a strike should then happen. If a non-crit then just damage, if a crit there is an disrupt and they aren't able to move and lose the action.

The distinction here is when they exit the square (valid trigger) then you get to do a strike. If we're following the logic presented here that the action doesn't get stopped/halted or whatever you want to call it, through a reaction, the person could simply finish their move and be out of range of the Monk when we now are saying they can react. We know that isn't true because then what's the point? The reaction should get to finish resolution first.

The order has to be Action declared and taken/in process of happening (movement) -> Ready Trigger gets met -> Reaction happens and is resolved (including any disrupts) -> Action (if possible) finishes but if not possible doesn't finish. Otherwise what is to prevent a move action simply moving out of the range of Stand Still and making it an irrelevant power?

Reading some of these interpretations here would mean that if your Stand still non-crit killed someone as they were leaving a square they should still be able to complete finishing their move, scooting their corpse along the floor because you can't disrupt it with just an non-crit Stand Still hit, the same if they were finishing a spell? Pathfinder 2.0 Weekend At Bernie's y'all.

I don't think that makes any sense from the reading of the rules.

Page 462 of CRB states:
When its trigger is satisfied—and only when it
is satisfied—you can use the reaction or free action, though
you don’t have to use the action if you don’t want to.

Krastor remembers he searched damn far and wide for a great cook and he better pay dividends now!

In rousing the caravan Krastor finds the cook sleeping and wakes him and says, "Remember when we saved your life from a terrible swarm of killer bees that we actually set loose? Well, you can repay us now" Ulf looks over and Krastor frown at him, "Not you. I think you're doing a great job navigating us by not moving"

Krastor being digging through the caravan trying to find their food supplies they were storing. He points to various odds and ends out to the cook to bring along with him.

"I want you to prepare a dish we can call 'Tears of Lucien'" Krastor says to the cook.

The dish includes
1) Artic Wolf sautéed over a bed of heart-shaped crackers
2) Crunchy spider leg appetizers
3) A leafy side with dangerous looking flowers shaped like moons. In the middle sits a green, almost acid looking dip for the crunchy spider legs.
4) Some nuts and shells when opened reveal an edible human man made out of chocolate, covered with some of the green dip. Most of the shells have a massive crack through them as if someone had tried to delicately cut in to the inside but instead gashed it entirely.

As people try it Krastor makes sure to serve it with his "Special Ingredient" (Casting Prestitigidation on the food) to make it taste delightful.

We will make sure and inform Ameiko about the goings on about the nobles, bandits on the Spirit Road and the presence of the Oni of Five Storms, The Forest of Spirits and “The House of Withered Blossoms”

Krastor looks the puppet show, fully understanding it but not really appreciating the humor. When the Prince challenges him for something to match he thinks for a while and then…

Krastor suddenly slightly modifies shadows to look like a horse with a dragon‘s tail and fangs. There are sounds of hoof prints clamoring along rooftops. Krastor explains to the audience in Tien that this is the story of feared and hated “Sandpoint Devil” and how it would eat and murder those who would dare to go outside at night. Krastor recites with great detail the terrible stories Koya used to always be so afraid of when she was younger but so loved.

Ability to recall the Sandpoint devil and all the scariness – Knowledge Local – 32

Periodically he makes the sound appear all over! Next to someone’s ear, behind someone else, never knowing where the sound or terror is coming from, only the hoofs and then tales of people being attacked, never seen again, or simply a pile of ash. Only the terrible worshipers of Lamashtu waiting, waiting for any opportunity for her monsters to come forth and kill everyone, making sure it is spoken in Tian for maximum coherency.
(OOC Casting Haunted FEY aspect and Prestigitation for a minor illusion and Ghost Sound for the sounds)

Krastor finishes and mentions to the Prince, “Anyway, that is one of our happiest tales at least. Maybe later I can tell you about the real enemies in Varisia.”

After meeting up with Cirwell later in the library, Krastor tries to think of any history or local knowledge he might have picked up about this “House of Withered Blossoms” in his studies:

Knowledge History – 32

Krastor tries to think on this and any other local customs or ways to identify who the Oni around the area might be with after researching information here

Knowledge Local – 30

Krastor talks to Shizu, “We need to get closer to the Prince so we can find his real intention. I don’t trust a smiling man, especially one who never stops. We need to get more information on those close to him or we may not know exactly what he is up to before it is too late.” He then looks over at Cirwell, "If things come to it we at least know one thing he will be interested in"

Krastor gets the information from Scry and relays to the party telepathically, “The guard Chua is asking about our every move. It appears we should watch him more closely, in addition to tracking this Prince. On our next day out let’s try to plant some coinage on him and if we’re lucky the Prince or one of his close associates. Let’s not discuss any plans unless through this magic connection, there appear to be too many ears”

**Next morning**

Krastor eats all the food he can muster and tries to use the chopsticks, after having been rebuffed by the local shopkeeper about his *Perfect* accent!

Attempt at using chopsticks – (Natural 1) for a total of 4.

Krastor yells out, “These things are useless and now I’m a mess!" The gross syrup leaking everywhere he curses again. As people watch he casts a spell and suddenly his clothes appears to be clean again (Prestidigitation) but not his mood.

During the festival Krastor is watching around, trying to find anyone looking at his party or staring for too long
Perception – 28

Krastor also continues to watch the Prince, hoping there is an opening for Shizu to get close enough to plant the coin to gather the much needed information. Perhaps a hulking brute of a fighter might provide the right distraction!

Krastor looks at the horses and the combat request and shrugs, telepathically he speaks to the party “If you want to feel more heroic I may be able to help!” He tries to have a diversion to make sure those participating have Heroism (if this isn’t allowed or impossible then ignore) Krastor thinks to himself “Why ride a horse when you can fly?”

When the wrestling tournament begins he hopes this can be the moment for Shizu to plant the coin on the prince or someone close to him. He thinks Parmenion should jump in and offers to get him “battle ready” by casting Grease so he will glisten and shine for certain victory and the locals might thinks he just has some sort of sweat gland problem!

Krastor agrees with everyone we need to look around for any prying eyes or divination magic
*Cast detect magic*
Arcana roll - 31
Spellcraft roll - 31
to ID any scrying/other non-party magic.

Perception - 33 to see who is observing us

After the party agrees to the plan, Krastor hurries everything around a corner which we then Dimension door out of sight. Krastor says, "Ok, if anybody was following us we have a moment" and he begins to wave his fingers and cast an incantation.

Where once were elves and humans now appear to be normal human Tien citizenry of the place. The illusion now in place, Krastor casts another spell and beings to speak telepathically to his party, "We should be able to inform each other on what is happening without any interference now. I'm going to go to the magic curiosity shops and see what I can find out about the magical power structure in town."

Krastor heads to the various shops and chats up the locals, trying to find out about magic items and other merchant wares. He ends up purchasing an Ioun stone to get the purveyor of the shop to be a little more chatty. Speaking in Tien, Krastor says, "Friend, these are magnificent items you have. I'm a travelling merchant and would like to know who in this town could procure such powerful magic and wares? I may have a great business opportunity. I would make it worth your while of course"

Diplomacy - 17

Krastor spends the rest of the time observing any guards and if they or anybody else is following him as he continues to visit shops

Perception - 17

Krastor tells his allies telepathically, "I'm going to return to the inn where we can meet up and drop our disguise and head back to the gates. Meet me there"

Upon returning to their chambers Krastor asks Shizu telepathically "If you were able to plant the coins let's see what this person(s) of interest are doing right now on the evening of such a festival. Parmenion and Cirwell, is there anything else you found out?"

**Cast Scrying** and waits to see what the coin reveals
DC 22 Will Save if the subject possess the coin. Due to Gilded Whispers they get -5 on this save.

Krastor looks up from studying and relaxing, trying to remember what his toes felt like after that frozen wasteland he had to trudge through and says, “Amieko, you know we will help you, but how do we know this isn’t a trap to separate us? I can speak the language here but know little of the customs and it looks like all of us are already persons of interest and any movement we make will be met with resistance. Oh… and Ameiko… we’ll expect even more reward when you’re set to your rightful position, ok? I want to retire with people to rub my feet as I explore with my mind”

A short pause happens and Krastor then looks over at Shizu, “Shizu, you know this area….perhaps we need to disguise ourselves and use the same divinations that were used against us against our enemy. While almost freezing to death and being blind I have finally seen an idea that may work and has only about a 50% change of getting us all killed! Things are looking up!”

Krastor fiddles around with his spell book looking for the right item to help until he finally exclaims, “Ahh! My new research has lead me to a spell which will let us disguise ourselves. Perhaps our enemy could see through it but not before we get the information we need about who they are first. Shizu, if I disguise our group to look like local residents, can I give you some of these coins for you to plant on persons of interest so we can turn the tables on them? Cirwell and I can speak the tongue and can perhaps gather some information. Parmenion can…make sure he has a strong cup of ale posing as our bodyguard or whatever they call it in these parts.”

//OOC – I’m proposing to cast Seeming on the group to disguise us all as locals and hope the illusion stays up long enough for us to gather information. I’m also going to cast Seeming to disguise the entire party to allow us to infiltrate and gather information without having a target on us. Also I want to cast Gilded Whispers – which will let me give Shizu 2-3 coins which can be scryed on for those who get them planted on their persons. I’ll also be casting Telepathic Bond so we can all communicate our maneuvers.\\

Considering the next module in the line is coming out this month and Wardens still doesn't appear to be PFS sanctioned, is there any estimate on when it will be?

I hope you guys can get the module lines sanctioned a little bit faster going forward but I understand you can only do so much. It would be nice to get the modules and have people get a chance to run it for PFS and not wait 3-4 months.

Syntaxed wrote:

Is there any time-frame on this getting sanctioned for PFS Credit? I want to bust out my level 12 to the Mana Wastes!

The draft for sanctioning Wardens is on my desk to work on this week, in fact. My aim is to catch up on sanctioning before starting on scenarios.

Is there any estimate on when it might be sanctioned?

I'm turning in to a Mana Wastes Mutant and the only cure is chronicle sheets!

Is there any time-frame on this getting sanctioned for PFS Credit? I want to bust out my level 12 to the Mana Wastes!

The issue with Dragons Demand is PFS players I know don't want to play pieces of it, nor do they want to play it in campaign mode so it simply doesn't get played anywhere in the PFS public that I have seen in the entire Bay Area. I know players who would play it if the whole thing was sanctioned in PFS mode.

What exactly is stopping it being run in campaign mode with PFS rules for credit if the players want to run through the whole thing?

Most of the chronicle sheets in DD cover the critical areas and if it was done in campaign mode you'd get 4 chronicle sheets anyway. It is just going to be a function of the new format, which unfortunately doesn't allow for a single day to complete one like doing so at a convention or game store. The Dragon's Demand also throws loot like candy in order to power you up through 7 levels which has some issues along with the some pretty grindy dungeon crawls to get players there.

After continuing to read Wardens of the Reborn Forge I really hope it gets sanctioned like the Dragon's Demand did, but perhaps break it up even further with chronicles so more parts can be included in smaller play sessions.

This 12+ content is badly needed as an alternative to running Eyes of the Ten in PFS and I hope more people purchase this module to show demand and desire for higher-tiered adventures.

Keeping my fingers crossed that the entire module will be PFS elgilible, that will make it in demand in the PFS world. If chopped up and only pieces are eligible I will probably never buy nor play it.

I would think it would be like Dragon's Demand where you can play in "campaign mode" or piecemeal like an AP. You still get chronicle sheets for both. It would really help fill in the much needed level 12+ material if so.

Hopefully Paizo can give us confirmation that it will be sanctioned and if it will function like Dragon's Demand did.

I'm refreshing this page like every ten minutes...

You must be getting pretty tired!

Is there any estimate if these are going to make it out this week? Did a Dragon breath on them?

Any word on the release of the chronicle sheets?

I'd also like to know when these will be available as I'm currently running this. Previously I saw it was supposed to be shortly after Gencon but still nothing.