WitchyTangles's page

Well, since I don't consider (personally) Golarion as being anything like Earth, real world comparisons have no meaning to me. It isn't medieval in nature as many people seem to equate it to (in my version only) Civilization is more advanced in most places and in many different ways than would be possible on earth. Better hygiene and diet would extend life spans, especially with the possibility of medicines and medical skills available. On and on there would be countless differences. This is just my take on it.

Magic is a much more permeating force to me and is much more a part of the world. Something like and yet unlike and in addition to the electromagnetic field. We use these lines of power and have nodes where they intersect the strongest and spell engines to utilize them. The great arcane colleges and smaller schools use these to create magic much more easily. In some of the more advanced and civilized nation, as well as ancient ruins sometimes, we have civic works and other various magical items/effects/works. Many places have nothing like this and many people have never seen anything magical at all in the less advanced places of the world.

Some of my reasoning has little to do with rules and more to do with the fact that a.) Arcane power is much easier to tap in my campaign for those trained and skilled in it, b.) Wizard don't always die with their boots on. Some go on to teach or retire but still need funds for continuing their studies and interests. They sell their skills to large cities/wealthy individuals/etc., They invent things and sell copies to those that can afford it and any other money making enterprise that is possible. Some legal and ethical and some not of course.

I like more magic in my version of fantasy. It's not for everyone and it's not taken in the same directions as Eberron. But it works for me.

Back to the OP. I'm putting my annoying 2 copper pieces in and saying that unless you are absolutely canon obsessed, just take out what doesn't fit to you. I know that in doing this it creates a huge hole that needs to be filled with your own creations. But due to the kitchen sink-esque nature of standard fantasy settings that need diversity to appeal to as many players as possible, it ends up as your only choice. Leaving currently un-used portions of the world vague may work for your campaign style as well. I'm a crazy geek who stays up nights writing semi useless content for my campaigns, so I do add on material even if I AM keeping all of the canon game world content. Own the setting and play what you like.

While I don't like it either, I completely understand why it's done. Paizo has created an amazing and versatile world and the work that's going into all off the supplements and books is worth it for ideas alone even if you don't take it straight as written. I get cranky and snotty about it at times, but it's kind of what you'll deal with in most published fantasy setting. Diversity sells and sometimes it seems that more originality doesn't. Look at all of the more original concept worlds and settings gathering dust on game shop shelves to see what I mean. Weird but true.

I promise that you won't go to jail for breaking canon in your own game =D

I'm an undead and aberration type girl myself, but I also love the outsiders =}

Current favorites are ....
Qlippoth (Thank you Mr. Jacobs!) are so disgustingly awesome. Dropping a slaver band of Shoggti on the party last session made for some chaotic and frantic fun as they scrambled to figure out what they were up against and just how much trouble they were in =D

Aboleth ~ because well...yeah...psionic megalomaniacal elder mastermind bottom fish.

Flying polyps ~ long time running joke with the players, so I have to add them.

Umbral dragons ~ I'm having an obscene amount of fun tormenting my players with them up in Virlych.

Lich ~ the lich template is so versatile and it's fun to create various lich types from odd intelligent races and monsters.

Vampire ~ cliche's yes, but a clever and well played vampire is a beautiful thing to behold.

Count me in with the Dragonlance dislike team.

Qlippoths ate him....
...nom nom nom....

Sorry =D

I am all over redundancy and use both. Yeah...I pay paizo twice, I'm sure they're ok with that ;P

I am not a muscle girl and can't haul a huge lot of material with me like I can a laptop...AND I back everything up so I'm in no danger of losing it.

NOTHING beats the clatter of real dice hitting the table and where would gaming be if you didn't have paper character sheets and notes as well as hand scrawled maps????

Old school AND new school.

So to continue my fashion and culture blather I will start with a game cliche' issue that has bothered me in all high fantasy or sword and sorcery types of fantasy rpg.

Most games seem stuck in either a perpetual medieval-esque or renny-esque setting with little variation. Further they seem stuck in a British inspired style from one end of a northern continent to the other.

What's with the huge lack of fantasy over reality????? Usually these cultures have been going on for thousands or at least hundreds of years. And with true gods and magic, you'd think that they'd advance to some other level of culture and style. Wouldn't you?

I'm curious if any anyone else has found this weird? My home version of Golarion is a LOT more fantasy and not at all stuck in the medieval mold. Even backwards and hidebound societies like Ustalav have been fantasied up. Meh...PUMP UP THE FANTASY VOLUME!!!!!!!!!!!

There are no Catholic/Protestant morality codes and culture dictators to determine moral and societal norms. What would be considered moral and right with paladins of Golarion wouldn't be based on Christian values during that setting related time period on Earth. It's absolutely strange to even compare them. Why would they be???

I confess to an absolute love of shiny swords and armour too but beyond that,I like a lot of difference. Technology and science have always been a tricky and thorny issue and I'm still working on that.

So, when I post culture and fashion ideas, they will mostly be more fantasy oriented and not so much locked in the medi/renny style. I'll keep some of that but mix it with other cultural and fantasy styles and time periods. It gets boring playing the same thing all of the time.

Thanks and sorry if this came off as a rant.

I will post stuff when I get time...rl is being a pain in the butt right now.

http://paizo.com/products/btpy95d2?Pathfinder-Campaign-Setting-Technology-G uide

Pssst!!!!

:D

I'm comfortable and have played all classes, races, cultures, gender etc.

Some of my gaming mates think that I'm fairly odd because I enjoy playing male as well as female characters. One of my favs all time characters was a male gnoll sell-sword. I get stuck in class comfort zones though. I like playing paladins, witches and wizards the best and just can't get into rogues at all. The closest I can do is swashbuckling fighters. I don't play monks and I hate hobbi, er halflings. But I love wrapping my head around some new combination. I'm looking for an interesting base race for a Tiefling to play in WotR.

I think it's weird when people can only play their own gender and race myself. RPGs are essentially live acting in the round. I play it to role play and have fun being different fantasy individuals. My BF likes playing bi female rangers, female rogues, both genders of barbarians and both genders of paladins.

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

LARPing?

Well, it happened, but normally we just sit in front of each other, talking dirty :D

My BF and I have been having this kind of fun for ages =D

I'm only a little bit not lawful good but I make good cookies =D

Latin makes for interesting character names to me. Though the campaign (CoT) that I played in a few years ago used the kind of Italio-English name style. I played a swashbuckling bard named Indigo Armati. But Cheliax has an almost fantasy Latin sound to it. Lexilogos has some good Latin dictionaries.

Concept words are good too. I want to play a Tiefling sorcerer/ess, with some fire based bloodline named Crucible. Concept or quality words can really define a character.

*Skips through juggling turnips*

!!!!!!!POODLES!!!!!

Ah Yamara! My BF and I were just laughing about the headpiece/nose pieces/etc. of Frinn a few days ago.

Sorry, but this really made me laugh. It sounds like the name of an infamous Chelish bordello or one of THOSE plays.

Too lazy. Pure and simple. I belong to the church of the sloth lords.

I've read through some options and I think that it's going to come down to something along the lines of a limited wish/wish. But they're going to be sent on a research and ancient lore seeking quest and will require travel to some incredibly dangerous locations to get it at all. And then it'll only be possible if both demi-planes are made permanent, are compatible options-wise and are created in the same plane, ie astral planer. It makes sense this way and makes a character driven story more exciting than just a sure-why-not ruling.

That was pretty much my take on it as well. As my home game group is about to experience mythic ascension a couple of them have made noises about divinity and I wanted to have other ideas from my own. Sometime just throwing subjects out on the board gives me really useful feedback and new angles to consider. My own pc's get into enough trouble. I think any one that was GM-ing in a game that I was playing in would holy blue bolt me for the safety of Golarion.

Dale, I love your Book of...series. Thumbs up.

Skeletons of Scarwall was the latest one that I used and it worked really well for us.

IF a pc passed the Starstone test and actually managed to ascend (Anything is possible yes?) I guess you bob up cork like to your aligned plane...and then what? How would you create your religion and develop your church? Gain worshipers? I don't have ascension dreams at the moment, but I'm curious.

Does anyone have thoughts on this? (If this has been covered already, my profuse apologies)

So, I've found that just from a role play perspective, simple is sometimes better when laying on the horror. I used several WW wizards with a stock pile of scrolls of Sculpt Corpse & Animate Dead to send undead look-alikes of the pc's out of the fog as they were running out of light in the mountains of Virlych...silent & creepy to see your self replicated repeatedly and walking towards you out of the gloom. It's fun to come up with nasty surprises.

Sadly, I can't drink alcohol =\ But my mates were drinking Arrogant Bastard Ale last night and loving it.

I've only read historical and archaeological papers on it. It's good to know that. Thanks!

It sounds like you've got a great campaign going.

Currently? That I don't have enough money to buy everything coming up in the next year and I'll have to sell a kidney to be able to go to PaizoCon =P But otherwise not enough APs that I'm interested in running any time soon =(

I've already complained enough in other threads and I dread being too repetitive.

Some older cultures wore tightly layered silk armor because it was much cooler than metal and it would actually stop arrows. Historical India and also the Mongols had some amazing weapons and armor.

I'm working on daily life and culture in Lastwall that includes everything from clothing to mannerisms,colloquialisms ,food, social norms...I'm a fool for detail. I've done a bunch of work on Ustalav as well. Today I'm trying to come up with a comprehensive social norms table to roll on for each country, culture or where ever one would be useful. Too hot to go outside so I'm hiding in my shady computer room brain doodling =P

I've got both! I need to be able to carry the material with me with out carrying 100 tons of books.

I know how that feels. I was with my previous to this latest misbegotten group for 1/3 of my life. We knew each other very very well. I moved to another state and some of us had other rl situations that scattered us across the globe. We talk via various social media and actual phone calls all of the time, but it's not our gaming group...for the last couple of years I've tried and tried to find others to game with and mostly I end up with the mmo twitchy type that only want to kill and level as it were.(Sorry if this offends some of you. I love FF and Skyrim...but it's not roleplaying) Role playing is foreign to most of them and those that do try are sometimes jeered out of it by others at the table. I'm to the point of holding gamer auditions lol! I'm not good at describing game detail and all that in posts, but I've been gaming since I was 13 and Gm'ing since I was 15. I'm by all accounts a pretty good tale spinner with heavy on the fantasy and horror elements. It seriously sucks to have a situation in your life like this. Do you have a local online gaming chat board? Or one that has a regional section? Getting to know people online is a pretty good step in the right direction....I've just been chatting with some gamers in my area on Obsidian Portal and that may be a viable gamer option for me since some of them live not too far away and we may get together for a trial session or two. I'm geeky girl awkward and shy and have a hard time connecting with people with out feeling uncomfortable until I know them.

I hope that you find some way to game, I don't think I'd ever like to be without my rpg sessions...I spend too much time in my own head as it in. It's pretty much my social life =P

Gnomes
Humans (versatile)
Tieflings
Aasimar
Changling

Also I wanted to add. I'm very picky and more so than I need to be. Most artists aren't historians nor are they costume designers. Their talent is in drawing which is something that I can't do, so I feel that I shouldn't complain even if I detest the art. I wanted to show some love for the art that they have worked hard to create. I can't even draw attention =P So I just adjust and find my own art. It's wonderful to be able to imagine and mentally paint your version of the world. Looking really forward to hearing your ideas =}

How much is too much?

I have noticed that I have toned down with the gore and graphic descriptions of violence lately, either I am getting tired of it, or I am getting more mature and don't need cheap thrills.
That said, a well placed graphic description is good. Especially if it is something dark.

Also there are the subjects of racism(species-ism?), sexism and other mature themes. Do you use them? I do, and I mention beforehand that I will be using them to the players, especially new ones, because people are so easily offended these days. Or touchy on a subject because it happened to them.

What about you? How are you with blood, gore, horror, mature themes?

I was going to say before I accidentally posted while in a hurry. My last group and I could talk about anything and discuss if we were comfortable with a subject or situation. We were fairly wild, experimental and knew each others comfort level, even though there were forbidden topics. The current now in flux group is awkward and uncomfortable with a wide level of comfort zones that make it difficult to find a balance. These is little worse than trying to game with people that have an awkward relationship with each other. Gauge your group carefully and you'll come up with a comfort zone.

I personally love the game system. It needs tweaks, but I tweak everything. It's the MMO mentality that I'm not thee with. It's all about power builds and not about role playing with so many gamers in my area. After asking three players to find another game yesterday, I'm down to two people who actually want to role play and have fun. Some gamers can keep the gaming styles separate, but many don't seem to be able to or even want to. What's the point if you don't want to role play?

But if you can't resolve issues to the point that you're just unsatisfied... it's a game ya know? It's supposed to be fun =} Make yourself happy & find players that fit with your style or find a game that makes your time spent on it enjoyable.

My most recent are

A crazy nighttime carriage chase through the streets of Westcrown while also being hunted by assassin devils

My paladin accidentally "riding" a dead red dragon into the River Path in Lastwall and struggling to keep from drowning in heavy armor... Turns out dead dragons float rather well

So many it's hard to choose

Hello James

I have a couple of questions

What is your favorite city and/or country on Golarion?
And does the Worldwound have a counterpart in the shadow plane?

=)

I LOVE horror and creepy but won't go for physical and sexual abuse themes or allow players to get into them. Other "adult themes" depend on the group.

I've played a long time and nothing brings out the awkward like sex at the game table. Just don't go there unless that is really what you all like o.O. It's one thing to say the the guard captain is having a loud amorous encounter in another room, but it really doesn't need to get more graphic than that in your basic rpg session does it? All gaming groups are different but until you really know your group, keep that kind of thing light. At least that's my thought on it. I get pretty dark with the horror and some adult theme stuff but I know my players really well.

Sometimes I have some under age kids sit in with family members and I ALWAYS tone everything down.

Thanks. I just read through it again.

Thanks. LOL! I am glad that someone knows how to search! =}

I have a couple of paladin spells that I'd like to create and a player's cleric has a couple of spell ideas as well. I'm pretty helpless at locating rules on these kind of things and I didn't find what I was looking for.

Are there rules for it?

(Yes, I'm posting everyone into a coma today...transferring old dying computer files is dull)

Hey! I'm glad to have another detail happy person to obsess with =}

I should likely start a blog or what ever to post all of my junk on so long as I make sure that it doesn't become confused as official Paizo material...well...again maybe not. I'm THE most forgetful person on Earth.

But I'd be glad to share some of my material if I can organize it well enough to make sense.

Lastwall is in the same latitude that I am though the topography is different as they have the Hungry mountains, Path and the lake to modify their weather patterns. Ustalav is north and seems that it would be a lot wetter with possibly a lot more snow. Katapesh is being interesting to consider and I'm having a lot of fun with Taldor. The warmer climes are being fun to mix up the possible cultural elements in. I'm trying to go with a different mix than the earth-like counterparts. I see a lot of people going for an Italian Renny look with Cheliax (sp?) I usually spell the wrong...But realize that Europe was in a very minor ice age phase at the time, according to research and so the heavier fabrics and styles would likely be too warm unless the same conditions applied. (I'm a life long history nerd)

Since I'm playing primarily in Ustalav and Lastwall, I've spent the most of my creative energy on those places. Though I've done a fair amount with Taldor too. Taldor played a large part in the founding of Lastwall and new paladin sorts still travel there from Taldor I believe. So there is a regular influx of current Taldan culture. Ustalav is more insular and so has a more stagnant culture.

Lastwall loves horses, music and the arts. It's kind of difficult to decide what Ustalav does for entertainment except for sitting in their houses and throwing rocks at each other =p I think that they'd be a lot more into folklore and storytelling.

Food would be mostly based on climate and the possibility of imports. Lastwall would have Taldan elements in their cuisine I imagine.

It's so much fun to me to paint cultures in an adventure setting. I think that my poor players get overloaded but usually don't whine too much about it.

I'll share details once I've put notes in some kind of order.

=}

Thanks James =} I had forgotten the part about primal magic.

I let the players describe their spells within reason so long as it doesn't change the basic nature of the spell.

Extensively. I always rip the AP apart, add reams of detail, slow down the progression and rebuild. I love the concepts of an AP but I'm deeply into personalization.

Oh yeah, and when is the Valeros swim suit edition coming out???? ;) :D :D :D

A girl CAN dream, yes?

There are a bunch of older nations, ruined and lost places down around the tip of Garund that could use more exploration.

I'm really detail oriented so the more color the better imho

We call it the Essence. It's sort of a eternal well of raw arcane energy that either you are born with an innate connection to or you learn the methods of tapping it and shaping it.

Really simple and not well defined, I've always just left it at that.

Taldor would be awesome. Maybe something like helping the would-be empress Eutropia?? Euphemia? (what the devil is her name???)usurp the throne to become the first female ruler. The PC's would have to seek out items/secrets/etc. from the early Azlant outpost days in pre-empire Taldor...Of course there would be complications...Accidents will happen...Alliances will shift...Sometimes leaving sleeping dragons lie is for the best. Disturbing the dust of the past is always a dangerous thing.

Kind of an intrigue and adventures AP. Something a little different like that would kick pooty!

THIS one sounds like a kick! Who doesn't love being thumped by giants??? I think I'd play a gnome. Then it'd be against the giant giants =}

Sorry for this =P Can you just imagine family reunions? Awkward!

Thank you! =}

Ok, I'm in the no guns, no robots and no space stuff crowd. That being said, it looks like there are a lot of releases coming up that I'll want. I'm more interested in magio-technology but very heavy on the magio part of strange lost magics of lost civilizations. Bring on Azlant, but make it magic heavy and weird.

Seeing that I am the fluff queen of endless minutiae I have ask how much detail do you make up for your campaign?

I've got many many folder with things like local and national costume, famous authors, local food, famous weapons, famous battles...famous every other category that you can think of.

I think that I'm singularly weird, but I live for detail.

I'm working on various detail project for Lastwall and Ustalav and trying to consider longitude and latitude and climate when designing the culture.

So tell me I'm not alone in my weirdness lol!

Various Android Lust
Various NIN
Various Kelt punk [Dropkick Murphy's]
Various various-ness

Good day for random music =D