Timothy A Dohrer's page

I just finished running Hellknight Hill and Cult of Cinders...about to start Tomorrow Must Burn...

THANK YOU MSAbaddon for saving my hide! I am working 60 hours a week from home on my job and it is killing me. The only saving me is our now weekly Age of Ashes campaign. Each Saturday night, this group of 8 friends with 35 years of gaming experience gathers to play through this pandemic. I don't have time to create maps or to really learn Roll20. If it wasn't for this message board and your amazing map work, I would be LOST! This community is amazing. I am grateful and humbled by you all!

One of the groups I play and GM in has very purposely played in Asian campaign settings for 10 years. When the Jade Regent AP came out, we sunk into it and REALLY enjoyed the entire arc. Some of that was certainly spending time back in Sandpoint and learning more about Ameiko and her family. Then we loved the idea of traveling north on a caravan instead of being tied to one town or area. Then, there were ninjas fighting vikings!! And then we adventured across the frozen north. It was fantastic and epic. And as we finally entered Tian Xia, yes, we certainly had characters that were "westerners" experiencing a very different culture, but that led to some fantastic role playing by our players. There were also a few who found their characters traveling to the homeland of their ancestors, which made for some incredible moments and character development. We always felt the material was respectful of culture, as was our group, including our GM for those final chapters whose family immigrated from Asia. Jade Regent stands as one of my favorite experiences playing the game I love. I'm excited to have more adventures in that part of the setting!

So...HOW do I access these events? Do we have to register somewhere? I would really like to watch these seminars live!

Always nice to check in on a comment and see how the conversation has gone! I appreciate those who have tried to make a comment in the spirit of discussion as opposed to just being snarky. Or argumentative. My OP was really a lament. I love Pathfinder and so do my players. A bunch of them love using digital tools and spent years loving HLC. We made a HUGE decision to NOT go to 5e but stick with Pathfinder 2e and Paizo. Back when I posted this, I had just finished a session where I saw real frustration with the digital tool meant to support our play. And my posts to LWD have not gotten the response i had hoped. I just want Paizo to hold this third party publisher up to their own high standards. Or find another partner.

At our last gaming session, my group had a discussion about being so frustrated with the Hero Lab Online experience that maybe we should go back to PF1 or even switch to 5E D&D.

Now I know this is a rather extreme position, but my group was deep into Hero Lab Classic for PF1 and really enjoyed using it as a tool at the gaming table. They are all veteran players but we are older and have less time now so using a tool like Hero Lab is kind of essential to our enjoyment of the game. Several of them are engineers, techies, or teachers and have definite experience and opinions about software and interfaces.

It was a bit of persuasion on my part to get them to switch to PF2 last August, but we did and we are almost done with Hellknight Hill...and loving it, even with the steep learning curve of the new rules. They were all looking forward to using Hero Lab.

But the transition there has been rough. They don't like the interface. They balked at the cost. There have been significant bugs and glitches in the software. There have not been enough system upgrades. They don't like being tethered to the Internet. They don't want to pay additional money for additional packages. There was not support for Age of Ashes at launch. And then this week we get great new that Age of Ashes package is available, but it is only the first 3 adventures AND it will cost each of them $9.99.

There are no clear alternatives out there for iPad/MacOS. I'm also not sure why the financial model can't be more like D&D Beyond, which allows me to purchase data packages and then share that with my group at no additional cost to them. It just felt like a kick in the head to tell them they needed to start paying more to get the content when the experience has been so negative.

I was glad to hear that Lone Wolf was pulling people off RealmWorks to increase support of HLO. But I am worried that it is too little, too late for my group. There need to be significant improvements to the experience and cost structure if my group is going to continue with HLO...and maybe Pathfinder 2e!

I was very strategic in picking up everything at GenCon and then foolish to try and run Plaguestone that very night! We were learning the new rules, creating our first characters, and I was trying to prep the adventure! So I made some mistakes the first night and we played for about 2 hours. Then we played another 2 hours on Saturday night and things went much better.

The Fall of Plaguestone begins as a classic mystery, with the PC's in the role of amateur detectives, following up on various clues and interviewing members of the small town to discover more. And herein lies my problem with the adventure...

As the FIRST official stand alone adventure that has been billed as a good way to learn the new rules, I would NOT have selected this adventure, especially for any newbie GM's out there. Yes, I like that there is very quick combat scene to get action rolling and to learn the combat system. But the GM is expected to run several named NPCs in the caravan. And then a very large collection of NPCs in town and the tavern, many who will be important to the subsequent investigation. Even as a GM with almost 40 years of experience, I found this overwhelming to prep and stay on top of. I can't imagine a new GM tackling this.

Paizo has produced several better "intro" adventures for new players and GMs. I realize that a "Beginner's Box" is probably in the offing, but I would have hoped for something like that in the first adventure here. I also recognize that I jumped in without fully grokking the ruleset or the adventure. I am looking forward to running this in 2 weeks with my regular game group at home and getting a "re-do" on the first Chapter of the adventure. I'll let you know how the rest of it goes...

Can’t wait to pick up all my subscription HAUL tomorrow morning outside the Sagamore! I plan on running Plaguestone tomorrow night!

I have played through two full Adventure Paths: Rise of the Runelords and Jade Regent. Consequently, I have a deep love for this section of Varisia! It is so great to hear about all the changes that have occurred in the past 10 years as a result of the Adventure Path stories! While I am ready to explore other regions of this world, I will always have a soft spot for Sandpoint!

Jade Regent was a bigger hit than Runelords in my group. We have always enjoyed Asian culture as a backdrop to our stories. The combination of the caravan ride through these northern lands, over the Crown of the World, and into the cultures of Tian Xia was AMAZING! If you haven't tried this AP, you should give it a whirl. Vikings versus Ninjas!! How cool is that?!

BTW, in our campaigns, Ameiko is not coming back to Sandpoint! She has claimed the throne on the other side of the world!

So...If I pre-order, will I be able to pick up my books at GenCon??????

I was lucky enough to run a short-lived game company in the early 90s and we made two consecutive appearances at GenCon is 1993 and 1994, so we were there when Magic made its big splash. While our very fun PBM game (Realms of the Unknown) fell victim to the Internet and, well, life, I continue to attend GenCon each year with a special eye for the small start up gaming companies. But nothing will ever replace my memories or excitement of setting up that booth, talking with other game designers before the doors opened, and the exhaustion of standing on my feet for 7 hours straight!

Good luck to all of you at Paizo this week! Keep smiling! And we'll all stop by to say thanks, buy a few new items, and let you know how much we appreciate what you do for all of us!