Toby Rogers's page

Hi,

I'd like to cancel my GameMastery Cards subscription please.

Thanks!
Toby

I got the same email this morning, but the dates were two days earlier - 15th to the 21st. I placed my order way back - January/February, I think. Amazon have had their chance with me & RPG stuff, many times over. Next time, I'm ordering stuff from my F (not at all-)L GS.

Horrors of the Razor Coast monster pdf (this one might be too big though and have to be its own print book - we'll see)

That sounds like sheer toothy awesome! Especially as a print book! Got to love monster books!

I think it's rules-agnostic. The blog post says that "Descriptions are detailed, but contain no statistical information, making them useful with any game system."

You might even draw up a table and have PCs randomly roll to see what state they are in, with each of the option having some weakness, compensated by some other benefit.

I really like this idea - it definitely fits into my style of play. I'll have a mess around with it, and see what I come up with. Thanks!

I plunked them into the In Media Res combat at full health. Anything they used was then considered 'spent' when we went back to the beginning and did a "how-did-I-get-here" story

I like this idea too, but this particular adventure kind of only goes forward from that point, so I'll have to save it for another time.

I am concerned that anything I do removes choices from the players, one of the cardinal DMing sins.

Not where I come from. I often find constraint builds creativity. That said I think your kinda talking about two diffrent things.

Thinking about it, I probably am - I think I am conflating choice and control. The purpose is not so much railroading according to a plan, as setting up a dramatic situation, and the mechanic I am looking for is just another tool to enhance the drama.

Basically, I don't want to have to run the heroes through a boring, protracted battle just to make them feel like they've gone through a boring, protracted battle - I want to cut straight to the interesting bit but keep the feeling that it was painful getting here!

I'm a big fan of occasionally chucking my players into the middle of a situation - my experience is that it produces memorable and enjoyable gaming sessions, so long as it's done with care.

In an upcoming campaign, I'd like to introduce the PCs during a pitched battle (towards the end, but the players won't know that) and I'd like to add some kind of mechanical effect to emphasise the environment & description. I've had a few ideas, but I am concerned that anything I do removes choices from the players, one of the cardinal DMing sins.

To compensate for that, I have been thinking about balancing what I'm taking away with an extra benefit, like "you've already used an encounter power (pick one) but you've earned an extra action point" or "you're bloodied but you can use two Second Winds this encounter".

I'm not really a mechanics-focussed kind of DM, so does this kind of thing sound workable? Is there a better way?

Yay! Looking forward to it! Now if only I can remember whether I actually ordered it...

Hey mate! Looking at it, I think you might find Corwyl, Village of the Wood Elves more useful - there's quite a bit in Bow & Blade that's kind of superseded by Golarion stuff - like the elven gods. I think the equipment and creatures sections are quite good - can't tell you about the prestige classes, how much they'd take to convert etc. I've got both books, so if you've got any particular questions, drop me a line and I'll see if I can help.

I don't use the map folios at all, probably because I have the AP PDFs - every time I see one in a shipment, I think "I could have spent that money on something cooler".

The city map folio sounds good, and it'd be great if the AP folios featured a combination of poster and battle maps (even if the battle map was just AP-appropriate terrain - treading on flip mat toes, I know) but I would not be bothered if the map folios, in their current form, were abandoned.

I buy KQ for the quality of the writing and the ideas (same as Pathfinder, actually). I don't really care which system an article's for, as the chances are that it won't be the one I'll end up using it in. System neutral articles are great, but sometimes you can't really "get" an idea unless there are mechanics to explain it, and I can often take ideas from those mechanics too.

Looking forward to reading Monte's column, and the dinosaurs!

That program sounds like it might be based on the book The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson, which made similar suggestions. It's quite an entertaining discussion on the subject, if you can get hold of a copy. It's been a while since I read it, but I vividly remember the dinner plates and bricks illustrations explaining the mass to required lift problem.

I haven't received this email yet - I wonder if perhaps it doesn't apply to people outside the US?

This 24-hour period will begin at 10:00 AM EST (U.S.A. Eastern Time Zone), Wednesday, April 15th and will conclude at 10:00 AM EST on Tuesday, April 16th.

I am hoping that's a typo!

I may have encountered a bug in the shopping cart.

I am logged in on several machines. I put stuff into my cart from one PC then left it there, and accessed the cart from two of the other PCs.

Then, I went back to the first PC and removed all of the items (from the shopping cart page, which told me I'd made too many requests too quickly). Then I added a new item, which I then bought, leaving my cart empty.

When I came back to another PC, I found that my cart contained stuff - things that I had put in my cart months ago, but removed not much later.

I haven't tried to repeat it, so I don't know if it actually is a bug but it did seem a bit weird!

I've got most of them and on top of Sharoth's suggestions (which I whole-heartedly endorse), I would add:

UK Customs are supposed to add charges whenever anything exceeds £18 ($27), but don't seem to bother until it gets to $100 - after that they always seem to add it for me. Between the VAT and the handling charges it adds a significant amount to the cost of a shipment (about £17), so I try to keep orders under $100 - but then it becomes a trade-off with shipping costs. So, it's good to know in advance if the next subscriber shipment is going to exceed $100 so I can budget for it.

Toby, I think you have the 'Fourth Wall' all backward, especially your use of the 'Breaking the Fourth Wall' within B. Brecht's work.

** LINK **

What you describe is exactly the opposite of Breaking the Fourth Wall, as to do so would be to interact with the audience.

It's quite possible that I've got it all wrong - it's been over a decade since I studied this. However, as I understand it, what you describe is what I meant about breaking the fourth wall, that in non-Gygaxian Naturalistic games, it is possible for characters to reference events that do not exist within the bounds of the story.

I can't think of any game I've played in where a character has directly addressed one of the players, but I have played in games where a character (not player) has made some meta-game* statement which makes sense within the context of the game. I would class this kind of event as breaking the fourth wall.

Hopefully I've clarified my position on this and haven't sidetracked the discussion too much!

* I am not talking about meta-gaming on the part of the players, which I consider to be something slightly different.

Edit: Back onto the main topic - I have been reading quite a few older fantasy novels recently (for the first time), and I would agree that their feel is how I think D&D "ought" to be

I do not know if Brecht does something with "epic" that I am unfamiliar with. A lack of [verisimilitude] for me makes for a more arbitrary, "fairy-tale" (for lack of a better word) gaming environment in which you have to accept premises without interacting with them in any significant way. What would make this more or less "self-aware" and "self-referential" eludes me.

I've never really understood why the term "epic" was used - maybe it has other connotations in German - but it describes the collection of techniques that Brecht advocated in his style of theatre - techniques that present actors as playing believable characters whilst maintaining a separation between actor and character(s) - hence "self-aware" and "self-referential". "Breaking the fourth wall" is one such common technique

I agree that for the usual meaning of epic, verisimilitude is an essential requirement of a game, and this is my general preference for the campaigns I run, but I also want to play games where the Heroes can do things that stretch the "natural order" of the game world, where they can "get away" with things that they can only do because they are characters in a game.

Very interesting. I believe you could extend the analogy to contrast it with 4E, which I see as "epic" gaming, in the Brechtian sense of the word. This would certainly tally with my experience of playing 4E, which I feel lends itself to a more self-aware, self-referential form of gaming than the 3.5 naturalism, that promotes suspension of disbelief and story-immersion.

I think that understanding the different approaches of the two systems in this way will help inform my choice of which one to use, based on the type of campaign I want to run.

Producing all those extra mats (and in time for the AP too!) sounds like a whole lot of extra work, and quite a few of them might be a little too specific - how many times can you use the same dungeon with the same layout?

Despite that if you could manage it, I would probably add them to my subscription. If it was only a couple of the more generic ones a path, I'd definitely go for it. I think the flip mats are a brilliant series of products.

Alternatively, what about the Map Packs? That sounds more feasible - I'd go for them too!

Excellent! Thanks Cosmo!

Hi there,

In my last subscription shipment (989622), the copy of Masters of the Pit was missing. I think it was supposed to come in the first package with the campaign setting (as the package said 3 books but there were only two). I waited for the rest to arrive, just in case, but they turned up today, also without it.

Could you send one out to me please? I don't mind waiting for the next subscription shipment if that's easier for you guys.

Thanks!

Nope - definitely a Wizards' book. I think it was one of their last 3E products that was never properly updated to 3.5, which is part of the reason it wasn't very popular.

Edit: I ought to say I think the whole thing is great. But then, I've rarely met a campaign setting I didn't like...

That's great - thanks.

Oops!

In my eagerness to take advantage of your DCC sale, I ordered a second copy of one I already have. Would it be possible to swap my order of "The Sunless Garden" with "Bloody Jack's Gold"?

If not, could you just remove it from the order please?

Thanks and I'm sorry for any inconvenience.

Quite bizarre! 2.1 works, 2.2 (which I was using) doesn't and 2.3 works fine. I'm sorry if I caused any inconvenience in asking about this - thanks to everyone for their help!

I'm running XP (SP2) and normally use the built-in zip manager. Following your suggestion, I tried it with WinRAR, but I still have the same problem.

Can everyone reporting the blank page problem with Foxit confirm that the Table of Contents and page 3 of the Gazetteer appears fine, but odd-numbered pages 5 through 63 appear blank?

Definitely - that is exactly the behaviour I am experiencing.

The only other odd thing I've seen has been the Crimson Throne player's guide, which only displays the bottom left corner of the background image.

Hi,

It seems that increasing numbers of PDFs, particularly in the Chronicles range, are only part-readable in Foxit Reader, my preferred PDF reader. Is supporting Foxit fully planned for the future?

Thanks,
Toby

Oh, I'd definitely buy a couple of sets of these if you sold them here!