Tark of the Shoanti's page

I know it is probably WAY to early for this kind of talk, but will it be open for others to make stuff for?

Had to take a break from the table for a bit, but now getting back to work on it. I am thinking about adding in the Inquisitor's solo tactician ability to replace the spell casting. I don't see where it would be a reduction in ability, or to OP for that matter. Opinions.

I was looking to port over the Hunter class to a S&S setting, but the spells obviously wouldn't fit. What would be a good replacement for the casting ability?

I will have to give that a look.

I am looking to make a world much like in the FF XII and XIV worlds, and am looking for materials for tech, including airships, and the like.
I have been eying the tech book from Paizo, but was wondering what 3rd party, or even from other system, books people use.

Been away from my table for far to long, and the hobby is dead where I live. I am looking to get into a roll 20 game if possible, I have tried PbP games and they move far to slow for me to be able to keep interested. Right now I work 2nd shift EsT, but have all weekend open for gaming.
Anyone out there have a empty seat, I would be glad to fit in, but am still learning Roll 20 so would need help in all that.

Been toying with twisting the iconics around into Holland and all, and this was just too cool a idea to me.
Just trying to figure out who to turn into what. Some ideas are straight forward (ie palmy to death knight, wizard to pitch) but bard into what.....
Even began a map to a new world with the idea.

While working on one world, I had a small idea about another per say. What would happen in a great evil arose, the iconics faced off against this evil and won.
The world so rejoiced that they became rulers of their own lands. But dark clouds loom on the horizons. As time wore on, these heroes became corrupt, flawed, and thus became the tyrants they once fought against.
Sound interesting? Just thought I would toss this out here and see what others think.

Sitting here with some time on my hands finally after getting done with "the real world" and my so called "responsibilities" I have begun to clean up and out my gaming books.
Sitting down I realized that a new setting would be fun to dive into, but it seems like everything I look into seems to have the "been there, done that" stamp all over it.
It got me wondering about other people in the community. What kind of world/s would you all like to see developed for PF?

I am looking for a general equipment and vehicle list. Does anyone know of a good one, doesn't need me PF, I don't mind converting.

I was working on the ideas of druids being "slightly" insane due to what was wrought upon the lands. They would become a NPC class much like Wizards who would be rare and guard their horded knowledge tightly.
As far as classes go, working on what to do with Bards and Rangers seem to be the hanging point for me. I am developing a mechanic type class. That and archetypes seem to be a hanging point.

As far as races go, I plan on leaving it open. The fall, and all that has happened before and after has lead to a large pool for people to select from.

Interesting ideas Gnomemaster, when I polish off enough of my notes and have the time, I will post them here for people to see. Damned real world keeps interfering with my fantasy.

Xuttah, you read my mind, lets of elder things, but as mythos, as well as things engineered by the previous age's people. I am looking to borrow from Panzer Dragoon Orta for some things setting wise as well as Mad Max, and Origin (the anime).

Since the fall knowledge of both magic and the sciences have been lost. So true science, and the knowledge of magic has been lost as well. Much of what is left today has been cobbled together piecemeal like.
That is why I am looking at just sorcerers, oracles, and witches. I was thinking about druids as well, but not too sure how they would have dealt with the utter destruction of the world around them. Much of the world is nothing more then wastelands.

I was thinking about keeping the exact nature of the fall a secret for story reasons. I am looking at various versions of the artificer and mechanic type classes.
Magic will be somewhat restricted, prob just sorcerers, witches, and oracles. Rangers, and other partials will lose their caster abilities and I am working on replacement stuff for them atm.

Well system wise I am not worried. I am importing some rules to deal with "tech" from the Iron Kingdom books, as they did an amazing job with it as far as I am concerned.
The tech level will be steampunk level in most instances, with wilder and weirder items scattered in.
What I was really looking for was what elements would people like to see in such a setting?
Classes, skills, archetypes, feats, etc etc.

Tark of the Shoanti wrote:

I explained it was a world larger then Mars, they got all technical about various weather, tectonics, and other things.

Some things some people cannot suspend disbelief of I guess.

Earth is larger than Mars.

At 250 miles per inch, a map of the Earth would be 100 inches across at the equator. Mars would be about half that.

Just now noticed that.. er I meant that it is about the size of Jupiter, and then they got all tech about the weather and stuff, good fact spotting, you get a +1.

But I stand by "Some things people cannot suspend disbelief"

What would draw you into such a setting? I am toying with making a mini campaign setting based on the mix of Thundar, Borderlands/Pandora, and Redline.
What would be things that would peak your interests in such a setting?

I was looking through some notes for a new setting I am working on, and was wondering if someone knows of any conversions from the IK classes to PF?

No loss of terrain types or locals for adventure. But it seemed to some people I showed it to, to be too large a land mass, but then when I explained it was a world larger then Mars, they got all technical about various weather, tectonics, and other things.
Some things some people cannot suspend disbelief of I guess.

AH thanks Orthos

Thanks for the feedback all, and the link the David will deff help with some of the finer details I was wrestling with. As for the world size, I have a map I am working from based on continental shifts, it shows a rough outline of the states and all the immediate areas around it, it doesn't look unnaturally large to me but then again I tend to think of epic scales, never had the nack for small settings.
This is the sit it is on http://panglott.blogspot.com/2009/10/continental-drift.html and if you click on the 325 million years ago link in the first paragraph it will show the map.
With I knew how to post links and all better.

I am working on a home brew setting and have been toiling away off and on for well about 10 years on this one world in particular. I showed a map sketch to a friend, and it had a compass and mile marker on it, and he saw this and asked:
"Isn't this a bit to big for a setting?"
The map, as it stands, it roughly 22" by 28" and 1" is equal to roughly 250 miles. Is that to big for a setting? Now by that I mean, does such a large area for the setting break beyond what could be expected for a given region. This isn't a whole continent, but merely a north western portion of a much larger continent. I am fine with it, but would like to here what others would say about the size, and constructive only please, I have enough trolls to deal with during my games.

I like the idea, maybe the equipment in general has to be masterwork to start with, and there can be different types of sockets, maybe size related? Each size has only so many types of "stones" or items that be added to it. IE Dragon Blood stones are powerful and there for cannot be set into anything but large sockets? I will add this to the list of things to toy with.... (damn it's getting long)

I usually suggest a fractal world generator when folks ask, such as: donjon World Generator.

Oh I used to use this all the time back in 3.0-5, but when I went without a comp of my own for a couple years I lost track of it. Thanks for posting it, I was also talking about this but couldn't recall the site. I can show them now and prove I am not a senile old man at the gaming store. LOL

I can tell you how I did it, but I dunno if that will work for other people.

I have run virtually every campaign I have run in 30+ years in the same campaign world. I basically grew the thing organically to a certain point, then decided to start with a cosmology and work down to meet in the middle. It went like this:

My first dungeon was created in an afternoon. I had just played my first game as a player and found that I really liked the game enough that I wanted to try being a GM myself. So the next day, as I sat at my bank teller drive-up window waiting for cars to drive up, I began drawing a small ruined castle. I just let my mind wander and ended up with three floors full of rooms which I populated with some random monsters that just seemed to make sense for living in the castle.

Then I decided that the castle, which once was on a small hill, was now on an overgrown island in the middle of a river. So I drew the river and some forests and a road on one side of the river.

That was the setting for my first session. The party had been sent to investigate some disturbances on the road and found the castle and we spent an evening having fun in the castle. Over the next week or so the party busily started clearing out the castle and I realized that my game was going to end pretty soon, but the players wanted to keep going. So at work again I decided that the castle, island and river was part of a larger land area and added some mountains to the north, some desert to the south and added a small town nearby.

That allowed the campaign to continue for a few more weeks, but soon that content was nearing its end too.

That's when I decided that I could not just keep growing the world as the party explored more, and I decided to create an entire cosmology, a solar system with multiple planets, laid out the main planet's continents and major islands. Added multiple mountain ranges, rivrs, lakes, seas... All of this was drawn freehand on typing paper (which was the sturdiest paper I had at the time). I...

I had several notebooks myself like that, and unfortunately they seem to have vanished in the last move I made. I am in the long process of beginning it again

Well, toying with several things atm for a couple different games had me explaining a couple things to new players. One asked me something that made me pause for a minute. "How do you create a world?"
He was asking about the initial crunch aspect for the world itself, IE geography, weather, etc etc. I said I usually get ideas from a odd map or from something that looks like a interesting land form. I am always taking pictures at my job of odd shapes of spills or stuff like that. I then sit and think about what kind of world would look like that and go from there.
I was wondering though, to see how others come up with it.

Odraude wrote:

As much as I agree with leaving many options open, I think we really need to stand back and take it easy with jumping on people that ban certain classes, especially pulling the race card and tyrannical GM card.

This. A hundred times this.

Banning ninjas from my game doesn't make you anymore racist than banning clerics and paladins makes you atheist.

There are any number of reasons to ban things from fames. "flavor" is just one way of saying many many things. Most of the time GM's are trying to go for a feel with their game and ban things they feel will disrupt the feel. If a player is just trying to go a different way with the mechanics than it is likely either a misunderstanding or a player trying to get one over the GM for petty reasons.

+1

Tark of the Shoanti wrote:

I don't see how limiting character options to what fit into the particular game's flavor being a bad thing? Is it just me, or do gamers today care only about their character and not the continuity of the setting and the overall meta game?

I mean, if there are no "X" people in the game that would limit class selection, deal with it or go to a different game, is it really that hard?

The setting fluff is not exactly the problem from what I read, it's the "I don't like X because of its name/implications/fluff"

....so it's not the setting fluff, just the fluff? I think you mean class fluff specifically? If so, it the setting fluff doesn't support the class fluff, it's a legitimate reason to make it gone. Again like I said if no X around, then it doesn't exist.

I don't see how limiting character options to what fit into the particular game's flavor being a bad thing? Is it just me, or do gamers today care only about their character and not the continuity of the setting and the overall meta game?
I mean, if there are no "X" people in the game that would limit class selection, deal with it or go to a different game, is it really that hard?

There are rules for taunts and the bluff skill, basically you use bluff to taunt the target, opposed by a sense motive check. If the bluff wins out, the target gets a -1 on attack rolls and AC till the next turn. It's a standard action, doesn't provoke AoO.
You could modify it, say if you win out with bluff X number of rounds, it makes the target focus on you for a least 1 round, or something like that possibly?
I have to agree with Evil Lincoln on it being a powerful thing to do, and that's from both being a player and GM for 20 years+.

I take classes out depending on the world I am running.
I don't like limiting my players too much, mainly I do it to fit the fluff, crunch can always be worked around.

I can speak from both sides of the fence, more as a GM. I ban classes if they do not fit the feel and world I am working with. I generally make my own worlds, or tweek them horribly to do what I want if premade.
I have allowed a lot, and I mean a LOT in my games. But some things on some worlds just do not fit into it, and I make sure my players know this well in advance as to not get anyone's hopes up.
A good example is a world I am running ATM, it's low magic, VERY low magic as in sorcerer, oracle, witch, and druid, and only some archetypes at that only. I game the group a "player's guide" to the setting that was a summery of the history as it is "known" by the mortal races, and a breakdown of how the classes available fit into the world.
None ever complained, even my one player who is a die hard Wizard player. In fact he went all out to make a character that would be a precursor to the founding-father type for wizard of the schools.
As a player, I look at any limitation I am given as a great vehicle to come up with interesting characters, but then again just my 2 coppers.

Chip mckenzie just about got it on the nose. They are somewhat like occupations.
As far as which, I was just looking to see if people were using them, it appears not.

Been working on a home-brew setting for a while now, and was trying to make things be a bit different and add some new twists to it. Was looking at a couple different things and the character themes from 4th ED (gasps) is looking more and more like something I want.
I like how archetypes tailor classes to be different but not require a ton of core classes. Now I like how the basic idea of the themes work, but I am looking to change some of them, and was wondering if anyone else has done something like this, and could offer some advice.

You might want to check out http://masseffectd20.wikidot.com/ they have some cool stuff there, borrowed some for my DragonStar games.

Tark the Shoanti wrote:

Been toying with a world event known as "the Sundering" in which a evil god is killed, but before the forces of good could rejoice, his death throes cause mass devastation and tear the world asunder.

From there, the world is trying to recover. (a cheap and easy reason to have floating lands)

Damn, that is almost exactly like a setting I've been working on. Disappointment.

great minds think alike? I have a massive folder filled with over 20 years worth of ideas for settings and stuff. That was a newer addition after sitting down and reading some lore on the Outlands, as well as some lore for the game Aion.

Been toying with a world event known as "the Sundering" in which a evil god is killed, but before the forces of good could rejoice, his death throes cause mass devastation and tear the world asunder.
From there, the world is trying to recover. (a cheap and easy reason to have floating lands)

Or perhaps a primordial died in the area, and caused the lands to erupt upwards and due to some odd quirk of nature, they just never came crashing back down, but hang suspended.

I finally got to watch all of Avatar and Pandora was exactly how I have always seen this idea in my head when making floating lands.

As far as worlds go, I always like to stick close to what our world is like but always add in twists. I will prob catch some serious fire over this, but maybe a world like Outlands from WoW?
It's been broken up and is floating in a aether which can then allow for all kinds of exotic things as well as "normal" things as well.

I would gladly lend a hand, or 3 if it's needed. I have a ton of semi finished worlds/kingdoms/setting is folders from since I began playing longer now then I care to admit.

I take things on a case by case, but what has really got me thinking this is the setting I am toying with has a lot of new races, and some of the old aren't around, as well, some classes are gone outright and some archetypes are..... rare.
Some people take the old 2nd Ed approach an see what kind of cool characters they can come up with in these times, and others can't have any limitations. Generally when in comes to 3rd party, I have a limited number I allow from, seeing as some of them are WAY out there with what they give players access to.

Oh wow, sounds cool and something much like I have been looking to run. Will definitely give this a read.

At my local hobby shop I overheard a interesting talk going on. With the release of the races book, and soon the equipment book, some of the people were talking about if a setting should allow for everything from the books. There were some who were into this idea of drinking from the fire hose, as it were, and there were those that were opposed. Some said if a setting has everything, then there is nothing that makes it unique and interesting.
I personally can see both sides to this. Being a gamer for, well longer then I care to admit, I grew up with restrictions on race, class, etc etc. I saw this in both ways a blessing and a curse. When 3.whatever came out, I was also excited and held many apprehensions about allowing everyone to be everything.
I was wondering what the general consensus around here is on the subject. Is it more fun with the sandbox, or do you like having some things in and others out.
I like a wide range of options open for character ideas, but do like having some boarders set, mainly because if there is everything at once, it almost seems like it takes the wonder and awe of exploring away when people can say "seen one, been there".

I have borrowed from video games and science in general, stuff like Orichalcum, arcanite, obsidian, glass, etc etc. I can dig out my folders on them if you'd like.
When making special materials, I always try to avoid stuff that is already covered like synjon has pointed out. I try and give things a bonus based on the materials.
Like with arcanite, it helps arcane casters boots spells, but could possibly damage or even destroy the weapon if they try and channel to much energy through the weapon.

I have done some work converting it to PF, did a good bit of work, but am always being distracted from working on it. Most can be swapped right out of the box, the guns are where I get caught up with stuff, and also converting stuff and coming up with archetypes that are fitting are where I am at.

I know it might be too late to influence it, but I had a brilliant idea the other day, that if you don't use I probably will.

Maybe make the Derro one of the major villains. Re-skin them as 'the False Dwarves', twisted mockeries of true dwarves, made by some vile demon or god. They are 'made' in vast fleshforges deep in the bowels of the earth, where even the dwarves fear to tread. They despise themselves almost as much as they do true dwarves, and this self-loathing spurs their despicable and evil experiments. They have pioneered innumerable dark magics and vile devices, and their wizard-priests gather in secret cabals under dwarven cities to abduct innocents and spread disease and ruin. They seek not only to destroy the dwarves, but to become them, in the vain hope that they can achieve a semblance of normality. In truth, it is only the ravings of a race so intertwined with madness that they cannot separate fantasy from reality.......

EDIT: fixed some grammar.

Interesting ideas there I do see something I could use thanks for the input.

With the upcoming Races book, I wish I could get my grubby hands on it now, because I like a lot of what I am seeing in the teasers, and it would be a great help to me right now to have it to move along with the initial stages of developing "unique" dwarves.
Also, I am thinking more and more of breaking the usual set up for the "Christmas Tree" as it were. I am thinking about working in something somewhat similar to what they do in the Elder Scrolls games. The material that the weapons and armor are made from add properties and or special abilities perhaps. (still working on a mechanic system for this as well as a listing for various materials.)
I am refining the lore so far for the setting, as well as developing a map currently, well refining the map I should say.

Oh damn, thanks for the vid Tels, laughed so hard I spooked the neighbors.

HUGE fan of a Dwarf only campaign. I attempted oner a bit back but encountered the same ambivalence that you are getting or in one case outright Dwarf hate.

I don't get it.
You should Definitely read the Warhammer books on Dwarfs. They are awesome.
Lets chat at a later date and swap ideas?

Finally got that pesky real world away from my fantasy, and am getting back into working on this project. I am working on ideas how to make the race different (clans, families, etc etc) without defaulting to sub-races.

One thing could be a rise of a Machine God cult, among the steamworked and even among the "soft" races as well.
I had similar ideas for various campaigns, and always made for interesting encounters and themes to run with. Like what I am seeing so far though, keep up the good work.