Yakman's page

going through the document briefly, i really like the preppers for homebrewed campaigns and adventures.

also, i'm planning to run attack of the swarm starting this summer and i'm going to set it in the Drift Crisis. I think the 'revision' helps the AP.

I was kind of bummed that we never got to see ** spoiler omitted **

Troy played him well. It was a good fight.

finally got my pdf... after a brief skim, this is some pretty good stuff.

urgh... really, really, really want to run / play this...

ugh... can't wait for this anymore!

Used the ghoul emo band Adipocere during my last session.

Unfortunately no one was thrown into the flesh eating mosh pit.

Alas.

I always thought the Drift was an underused concept. I want there to be floating chunks of other planes - bits of Heaven and Hell, abyssal dreadnoughts, devil-whales, chaos smurfs, a bit of everything in there. Society travel tends to be very quiet; I want the travel to be the adventure. I hope this moves in that direction.

to your point though, the fact that the drift is pretty quiet permits you to have all kinds of society adventures at the destinations and not bog down the session in the travel

Welp. Had my fingers crossed that "Drift Hackers" would run levels 13-20, but this makes sense.

yeah, i was looking forward to another high level 3 issue AP as well...

I was planning to use it in THREEFOLD, but honestly, I couldn't make heads or tales out of the text.

For folks asking for mech stuff - did you see the new Adventure that was announced (To Defy the Dragon) where everyone gets a mech?

no...

Waiting for the Player's Guide ...

Although the treachery of Rosler is not fully explained, just eluded to that he was loose-lipped with her location and attack plan against the Whispering Tyrant. Did Arazni find out that he was rumored to be contributory to her death, and come back to Rosler's Coffer to desecrate and destroy his tomb, or was it someone else?

so... it's weirdly described in the book.

Like... the Shrikes aren't buried there, and Roslar's not buried there, but there are other people buried there? But the Tomb is kinda not open? so how did bodies get in there? Who would want to be buried there?

It's possible you could work it that Arazni famously returned to wreak havoc on the town and desecrate the tomb at some point; this would help build atmosphere for later. Maybe she wrecked the tomb, slew the garrison, and that's what allowed the orcs to attack so successfully? But why would she bother wrecking it if he's not even buried there? Or maybe she would do it just to destroy the memory of the man?

Personally, I cut out most of the 2nd tomb visit... I couldn't wrap my head around who would be buried there, so the monsters as written didn't make much sense, and I wanted to move the story along. I did add something which was pretty unique to how I set up the game - an encounter with the ghost of one of the Red Shrikes - but other than that and the first major monster, I skipped it entirely.

Honestly, you could have a lot of fun w/ EXTINCTION CURSE if you made the Circus parts into a series of weird and unique side games.

I think the problem is that Traveller is pretty much locked in the "middle-to-older aged American traditionalist gamer" demographic and that's a demographic that doesn't take changes of any sort lightly.

Doing a world-changing event in a game aimed at such people was pretty much sure to backfire. Starfinder is catering to much younger and change-friendly crowd.

well, also the world ending event in Traveller kinda sucked. It made it so that the best thing about the game - GOING TO STRANGE NEW WORLDS - was pretty much canonically impossible.

So your thinking of 2 more 3 parters for The drift event year to come Yakman, that I could live with but I'd still like a full press 6 part AP to wrap up this event honestly.

The 'event' hasn't even been published yet. A little over-anxious maybe?

Thinking about running GRAV TRAIN for my guys between wrapping up THREEFOLD and starting up ATTACK.

THREEFOLD has been a ton of fun, and we are just starting Book 6, which is going to go way off the rails. Was trying to get them to play super-spies, but I think they'll just go tinfoil hats.

I know the adventure takes place in 4714 AR, but on which month an day does it start? Is there a set date? Or is it "at the GM's discretion"?

it's at the DM's discretion. although, were it me, i'd start it in the autumn.

Worth noting the Interactive Map hasn't been updated since 2e and wasn't even complete with 1e sources; there's nothing in Arcadia, very little in Tian Xia, and you run into stuff like Sargava still existing or Holomog not being labeled.

also more important things like Gallowspire...

has anyone run the sniper encounter? thoughts on how to make it suspenseful?

5e is the largest chunk of the market as the industry currently stands; it makes sense to chase what is functionally easy money, and given that the bulk of 3pp 5e content struggles with both production values and balance, a Paizo product is going to look awful shiny. Anyone that buys AV5e is a win for the company, doubly so if they're convinced to check out more of the setting and exponentially more if they come over to PF2 as a system.

Precisely.

5E is what, 10x the size of 2E?

Sounds like a big ole market opportunity. And as 5E's math largely collapses after level 10, publishing something that is beautiful and well-received - and ends at level 10 - sure sounds like a good product for that starved market.

given that there are massive space stations / space ships out there, you could set a whole AP where the PCs are salvagers on one of these abandoned titans. they'd have to find out its origins, battle off rival gangs, defend their prize against pirates, face its traps and guardians, and at the end, the original owners might come back... could be a great 3-parter.

Just started Book 6. The original Captain Rameem [discovered by the party in Book 3, and has been tagging along ever since] stole their ship after they arrived on Absalom Station. He's off to find the Chimera...

The PCs were a bit miffed.

Zapp wrote:

keftiu wrote:

I'm eager to see what advice the Player's Guide has for Ancestries

To be honest I expect the same advice every Player's Guide has given: you can play whatever you want.

(If a Player's Guide would ever tell players they can't play their favorite ancestry-class-background combo, because androids or shoony or druids just don't fit the adventure, I would be shocked to my core.)

Yes, I am sarcastic, but only slightly.

It really **would** be a breath of fresh air if Paizo would ever embrace "less is more" and create an Adventure Path with interesting limitations on race-class combos or whatever.

that's the DM's job to some extent.

I would hope that Paizo helps the DM more than they do on occasion, particularly by having stricter guidance in the Players Guides.

Ran into this in my Tyrant's Grasp campaign - it says in the player's guide that Gunslingers and Alchemists are going to have trouble early on because of a lack of shopping opportunities. So what does one of my players do? Builds a gunslinger / alchemist. [well, really he pulled out a concept he'd been working on and used that, and great PC, but he got a bit frustrated with the lack of alchemical stuff and so we dramatically killed him and introduced a more melee-focused replacement PC]

But you live, you learn.

as a follow-up that recommendations table in OUTLAWS's player's guide is a great tool.

Yakman wrote:

Dizn wrote:

Azlanti (Rogue) – Immortal human "weapon" created by the runelord of Greed. However, unbeknownst to Karzoug, immortality came with a cost. When killed, you always return, but lose part of your identity. After the fall of Thassilon, memories of your master were lost. What little remained you wrote in a journal. Over the years you’ve lived many lives and the more you died, the less you remembered. All that remains of your past is your journal, ancient Thassilonian ruins etched onto your body, and a Sihedron ring that you carry with you.

while this is a cool backstory, by allowing a player to choose Azlanti, they are mechanically much more powerful than the rest of the party.

Are you sure you want to do this? Maybe tell the player that the idea is cool, but for party balance they need to have a human PC, or that they need to rebalance their ability scores.

PCs background was a collaboration. Player wanted to have a character who was resurrected without memories and this is what we came up with.

The character itself is using human ability scores for balance sake, I just trapped their ancestry as Azlanti. Its pure background flavor. His curse of immortality on the other hand means he doesn't have to change characters upon death, but has to learn to deal with memory loss or amnesia.

do you think that a 'get out of death free' card might be a challenge in play - particularly w/ a rogue?

it might be problematic and encourage excessively risky play:

"oh, i'll go get in close with a giant [bad idea] and oh well, i'll just be back next session, whatevs."

Azlanti (Rogue) – Immortal human "weapon" created by the runelord of Greed. However, unbeknownst to Karzoug, immortality came with a cost. When killed, you always return, but lose part of your identity. After the fall of Thassilon, memories of your master were lost. What little remained you wrote in a journal. Over the years you’ve lived many lives and the more you died, the less you remembered. All that remains of your past is your journal, ancient Thassilonian ruins etched onto your body, and a Sihedron ring that you carry with you.

while this is a cool backstory, by allowing a player to choose Azlanti, they are mechanically much more powerful than the rest of the party.

Are you sure you want to do this? Maybe tell the player that the idea is cool, but for party balance they need to have a human PC, or that they need to rebalance their ability scores.

Human (Cleric/Armiger) – Cleric of Asmodeus that grew up in Korvosa. An orphan who was taken in by the Hellknights of the Nail.

#1 - what are they doing in Sandpoint? Do they know their real parent - is that why they've returned?

#2 - Do they want to stay in the order of the Nail?

i think understanding a PCs goals is really important to helping flesh out what you want to do with them. Right now, you need more to work with if you want a collaborative story.

Asmodeus is a god of pride and slavery, a.k.a., Illusion and Enchantment. I'd tell the player that maybe they want to focus on those types of spells as the game progresses, and the tremors of the returning runelords begin changing the magical world.

Yakman wrote:

I always make my players fill out a "10 Minute Background" [search for "10 minute background character"]

that way they develop most of the plot points and relevant NPCs. you can then connect them [or not] as you see fit.

Okay, this concept is great for creating PCs. Will probably start using it myself when I get to play as a character again. Thanks for sharing!

Yakman wrote:

For your elf, I'd have that unnatural fertility be tied to a more benign aspect of lamashtu.

Elves generally don't see many children indeed, so the fact they got 4 is definitely not normal. Did not think about a Lamashtu connection, but there are multiple paths here, I think that could work. Could I change a PC into a Changeling or a half-demon without them knowing about it? I can do whatever with the sisters, but the PC herself is set on being an elf sorcerer, and not really the evil kind.

sure. she wants to be a sorcerer, then you tell her that ... cool and that you'd like her to take the 'Abyssal' bloodline, because you have a story you want to tell with that.

She doesn't have to be evil to have the bloodline. But that's the source of her power.

Alternatively, she might present as an elf, but be a tiefling (possibly a Pitborn/demonspawn).

Of course, and this is the option you don't have to necessarily discuss with your player, if you really, really, really want to have fun, slap the Corruption 'Demonic' on her when they descend into the caves beneath Sandpoint... the closeness to the Lamashtan energy causes the corruption to emerge.

When the PCs return to Sandpoint late in the AP, she can cleanse the temple and remove the corruption... if she chooses...

i always make my players fill out a "10 Minute Background" [search for "10 minute background character"]

that way they develop most of the plot points and relevant NPCs. you can then connect them [or not] as you see fit.

for your elf, i'd have that unnatural fertility be tied to a more benign aspect of lamashtu.

i was working on an epic campaign based on the california gold rush... kinda abandoned working on it during the pandemic though.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I wonder if "people in ethnically Osirioni areas speak Taldane" is a parallel to the Hellenization of Egypt where Greek and later Latin became the de jure or de facto languages of Egypt for hundreds of years from about the time of Alexander until the Rashidun conquest.

Egypt had centuries of Greek and Latin rule, while I think the only foreign power to rule over Osirion was the Kelesh Empire; again, my frustration with Taldane being the default is that Taldor never had a foothold down here.

again, it's common, not the default tongue.

if your common-speaking adventurers are talking to the peasants of alkenstar they likely aren't going to get very far. the village hetman might be of more help, but maybe not.

but if they are talking to people that adventurers usually talk to: merchants, nobles, quest-givers, etc., then common should be reasonable - after all, Alkenstar is exporting its products into a Taldane dominated inner-sea.

So one thing is that Taldor, as the faded imperial power, is kind of presenting as "a thing that really kind of sucks" (just not as much as Cheliax.) I wonder if we couldn't make a redeeming characteristic of their culture that their language, for whatever reason, is flexible, easy-to-learn, internally consistent, no difficult pronunciations, and has sensible grammar. Indeed this might be a feature of all languages labeled "common" in the setting- they are simply very efficient languages.

Like Modern Korean is a much easier to learn language than Mandarin, and the reasons that more people speak Mandarin than Korean are mostly about politics.

It's possible that Taldane, Mwangi, Tien, etc. are more like modern Korean or Esperanto than English, Mandarin, or Arabic.

So... Taldane is Spanish?

CE can be big on revenge. " You don't do that to ME."

yeah. but he's going to try to turn on the party in the last act, when they've secured the score.

Yakman wrote:

Shaguang is pretty cool. That would be a fun place to set an AP.

Isn’t it mostly desert? Sell me on it a little.

it's more like a steppe. but then its also deserts and then onto the taiga as one gets north into the crown of the world. basically, it's manchuria and siberia.

so lots of horse tribes. there's some settlements, but there's also:

a) a shory flying city
b) shadow monsters which have gone native
c) giant vermin
d) closeness to Yeng
e) kaiju

so it's wilderness adventure land of grab bag adventure fun land

i could easily see an ap where:

a) players are shory ambassadors to the locals
b) players are locals who start off repelling a hobgoblin raid from kaoling
c) players are traders from Goka [would also give a chance to flesh out the big city]

Lots of fun things to play around with. Plus, you might be able to have this be the 'cavalier' AP where all the players have mounts or something like that.

keftiu wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

I like the idea of Rahadoum. But everytime I try to figure out how it can be from within, I end up thinking about the very real and very sensitive political issues we have in France about secularism these days.

I feel it is hard to tackle this concept without being heavily influenced by RL political issues, one way or another.

Or we stay outside the Rahadoumi mindset and just use them as mostly monolithic allies or opponents.

I think the way to play Rahadoumi folks is not to be anti-god, but to be pro-study. We live in an age of wonders - magic and science await mortal minds to tame and master them! Pushing the boundaries of the possible, not just for thrills or power, but to help your fellow people. You can do some really inspiring humanism with them, celebrating mortal potential. Healing broken bodies, repairing a dying environment… the Rahadoumi seek new methods of doing good.

Gotta remember, the Oath Wars paint a bleak portrait of things: the major faiths were a militant sun goddess, a patron of thieves and murderers, a god of destructive magic, and the lord of both assassins and natural disasters. Sarenrae is the only one with a warm and fuzzy side, but the other three all quickly skew horrifying. Their distrust of the divine is very well warranted.

I thought of the scientific progress thing too. Likely because it's what happened in Europe after religious institutions lost some of their power.

But Golarion is not like that. Based on Alkenstar, it is the absence of magic that drives technology. Not the absence of deities' worship.

And there are deities that are absolutely ok with technological progress. So, any country other than Rahadoum can be just as good at scientific progress AND benefit from the Divine magic of Clerics.

Except, of course, if Rahadoum gets help from those who also hate/despise the gods ...

Really Rahadoum is tailor-made for Alghollthus. As if they engineered its creation. Or as if someone engineered...

I played around a bit w/ Rahadoum for my game. There wasn't some war between religious sects, instead the Rahadoumi have always been against divine worship. They believe that their country was the first place which Aroden landed, and he gave them "The Law of Man"

The Rahadoumi believe that the successor church built in Absalom is an aberration from the original teachings. They have never worshipped a god because the Last Azlanti gave them all the teachings which they need. The death of Aroden has only reinforced their antipathy for the other religions.

Shaguang is pretty cool. That would be a fun place to set an AP.

Hilary Moon Murphy wrote:

Oh my gosh, how did I forget that one? It's a great article.

That's the thing about elven diasporas - they just up and emigrate out of peoples' memories :D

i had a lashunta pc who specialized in counseling elves who were still living w/ the trauma of waking up from the Gap.

so i've never used these, but legendary games put out a series of products called 'Red Queen' which are supporting material for CURSE.

there's some side adventures and other stuff which might help out.

for the specific corrupted grove, book 5 of Ironfang Invasion or Book 2 of Giantslayer might be right up your alley.

It's my understanding Q-Workshop and Paizo aren't making any more AP dice sets.

yeah, it's a shame. i have sets for each AP I've played or run.

Hoping it is a 6 parter rather than just a 3 parter, even IF it goes for higher levels myself. As a 6 parter will have more page count room to flesh this new event out even more, compared to a 2nd 3 parter.

Find out at Paizocon I bet either way.

Tom

i suspect we'll have the already announced 3 parter, and then 2 add'l 3 parters afterwards for 2023.

I'm a first time GM and the group is about to begin Signal of Screams after which we'll transition to Devastation Arc. I like having a prewritten foundation to help ground the story plus it has the added benefit of keeping our notoriously scatterbrained group on track. I've quickly looked through Devastation Arc and it seems like it'd be interesting for the group but another option for the final AP would be nice. I'm hoping there is another high level AP in the works for Starfinder and I can't imagine I'm the only one thinking this way.

i suspect that DRIFT CRISIS will have separate APs, so we'll get another one high-level AP in the back half of 2023.

great little story.

there's a little supplement at the end of one of the AGENTS OF EDGEWATCH volumes that talks about failed and prospective takers of the test. I thought it was a really good read, and built an NPC in my current game from a character mentioned there.

really looking forward to this AP. I'd like to run it, but we have ATTACK OF THE SWARM up next... and I gotta have some giant bugs gruesomely dismember and consume some PCs...

Boedullus wrote:

Pw/oS is that and then some. Practically the only direction they're given is "maybe other directorate reptoids...?" and then cut them loose. I'm a little frustrated that the devs didn't even attempt to give real guidance as to what other individuals the non-Erem PCs might be cloned from.

From page 5 of The Chimera Mystery:

"...Zaxo and his team have orchestrated a plan to replace the imposters...The PCs are those clones."

The Adventure Background here in Bk 1 makes it clear that the PCs are all clones of Reptoids in deep cover as people in the Pact Worlds, a mix of "important leaders" and "assistants to the powerful".

From page 37 of The Cradle Infestation:

"...dossiers on each PC. Each profile is accompanied by a picture and brief biography of the individual the PC is a clone of..."

Yes, having each party member be assigned a concrete template individual by the AP would be convenient in some ways, but it also makes it less flexible. The writers presumably wanted it to be adaptable, so they just went with having one PC being a clone of a known, named individual who has a specific role in the final book. This of course gives plot hooks for future adventures should the party and DM want to go further.

Personally, I'm having the 3 other party members realize their templates are all GTFO, after the media ruckus from the Llaoe Arae incident. The only one who doesn't of course is "Erem" (differently named in my game) becuase of their lofty position. "Erem" just attempts to spin the news and do damage control for their own power's sake. The other Reptoids (who operate individually, not in a unified cell) are impersonating less-public and less-powerful individuals, but choose to withdraw or hide in various ways, and won't be relevant to the final Book of the AP.

First session of this arc begins today for my party, and will be soem homebrew fill-in material to get them back in character between Llaoe Arae and Absalom Station. I'm having them take a 1...

so how did the insanity go? we'll likely start book 6 - although not get very deep into it - in the next session...

i changed the gray plot which is driving the book, so i think i can skip quite a bit of the otherwise sure to ensure shenanigans with PCs running into their "original" versions...

what i would want is a bunch of tables detailing quick ways to randomly generate robots, mutants, and other monsters w/ different features.

really, really need mutation stuff.

I also just realized how much smaller and more readable creature statblocks have become since the introduction of the three action system. Generally every action had to clarify what kinds of actions it took, or what the exceptions to those actions were.

it's night and day. i'll never run another 1E AP again.

very cool. hoping to get back into sfs this year...

I could see a triumvirate of Milani, Iomedae and Arazni taking the place of Aroden to guide Humankind on a better path of Good for all beings.

It would definitely need heroic PCs and a danger of apocalyptic scale to even make those three work together.

ridiculous.

humanity already has the god it deserves, and he has FOUR names...

just skimmed through my copy today. this seems like a really fun AP volume.

keftiu wrote:

It's a good thing you don't have to play as undead in Blood Lords, then :p

The only requirement for PCs is non-Good.

Nice. That makes it significantly more interesting. I won't lie that I haven't read/heard much on it only because I don't check out many of the announcements until items get closer to purchase.

it's still something like 5 months out. Paizo really haven't announced much for Blood Lords - and usually don't, so nothing new - this far away from publication of a AP.

look up 'Dracula Castle' in the old google machine. all of those movies have great castles in them... i'm particularly fond of the one from the 1992 film, but the Van Helsing castle is probably more in line w/ the AP

Strange Aeons would arguably be better w/ one PC. Someone's doing a podcast with it... I think they started w/ a single level 4 PC...