Hi everyone! First post, figured this was a good way to start.
Over the weekend I went to the bookstore with the express intent of picking up a few paperbacks to take with me on my trip to Virginia next week. As always I stopped by the RPG books to take a look and spotted the Pathfinder Chronicles. Now, I was familiar with the Pathfinder adventures, and I'm no stranger to Paizo's website, but this I had not heard of. I picked it up, thumbed through it, and bought it rather than paperbacks. I've always been a campaign setting collector (its a bad habit) and Pathfinder was so gorgeous I couldn't live without it. After reading some of it, I'm completely enthralled by it. It's a wonderful setting and I couldn't be happier with my purchase. In fact, I want everything Paizo makes now! As always when I buy something so impulsively, I came home later and did some research. It was then I stumbled across and downloaded the RPG Beta Rules and found out about all this work Paizo is doing. Something I want to get in on, but not sure if I'll have the time or willing players, since they're wanting me to run another Star Wars campaign.
Now for some things about me. I've been playing table-top rpgs since AD&D 2nd Edition and I've expanded my knowledge of the genre greatly over the years. I've played the d6 system, 3rd Ed, 3.5, d20 Modern, Savage Worlds, and recently completed a Star Wars Saga Edition campaign. That's the ones I've played, not the myriad other ones I've researched. I'm always the GM never the PC, but that's not been so bad as playing RPGs gives me an awesome creative writing outlet. I like to write a lot, but don't get to share it with many other people (its so hard to get published :) ) so running a game really gives me that rush of a writer sharing his work with people who really enjoy it. Anyway, I bought, suspiciously, the 4th Ed D&D books when they came out, and was pretty much disgusted and ashamed of my decision. I want my money back, WotC. Seriously. While, honestly, I never really held a ton of love for 3.5, 4th is just...really wrong somehow. I've always thought 3.5 could use tweaking a myriad of different areas. Primarily in the enormous amount of work of NPC generation and sometimes painfully slow combat. Star Wars Saga Edition addressed some of these concerns, and my layers seem to liek it better than 3.5. We've had great times with the both. Pathfinder is incredibly appealing because I have a lot of 3.5 books, way more than I should have, and at least they would not be totally wasted. For ideas, though, they are gold mines.
I know I've talked a lot, and thanks for listening (reading, whatever, heh). I'm sure this will be a great forum to lurk around, as that's what I tend to do unless I have something I really need to say. Though, I do hope to get in some on the RPG Beta Rules discussion.
Krakatoa!