@ GM: Thank you for running this for us, it was fun.
@ Everyone: Thanks for the roleplay! You all have fun and interesting characters! :)
I would be delighted to play with any of you again.
@GM: You asked for suggestions. I hope you find these helpful.
GM Suggestions:
Yes it was long. That's ok, it happens.
First a couple things that you did very well. You reacted excellently with some of our unconventional tactics, especially in the beginning in the casino. You also prompted players when they hadn't posted in a few days. Good job.
Now some tips for keeping things moving.
A lot of GMs abide by the "rule of two." If a PC suggests a course of action, and a second PC agrees with that action, then just go with that action. You don't need to wait for unanimous support from the table. This really helps move things along.
Also, for a scenario with lots of traps like this one, it might be best to just ask for everyone's perception checks and any special modifiers they have, and then roll checks against each trap they encounter. Just assume that all of the characters are searching carefully instead of waiting until they declare we are searching a particular area.
Just a couple of ideas. I admit that the scenario did seem to drag on, but I think you did a great job. Thanks again. :)
"You need chill," Zranashta chastises the bodyguard, then casts snowball.
Snowball touch attack, flat-footed:1d20 + 3 - 4 ⇒ (16) + 3 - 4 = 15. I added the –4 penalty for a ranged attack into melee, but Zranashta has concealment, so the bodyguard doesn't get his Dex bonus to his touch AC. Snowball damage, cold:5d6 ⇒ (5, 2, 1, 4, 4) = 16
"Torch like shooting stars? Zranasha asks before unleashing a volley from her ring of stairs and stars. Shooting stars fly from the ring and strike Grandmaster Torch
If the foo dog is hit by an attack, it will use its Stony Defense (Su) ability, as an immediate action, to gain hardness 8 until the end of its next turn.
I will post Zranahsta's turn separately. It might be more involved.
I will have Zranashta and Spot swap places in initiative.
"What treachery are you two discussing?" Zranashta asks of Torch and Ouidda. She draws two harrow cards and her arms sweep in large circles as she casts a summoning spell.
If the foo dog is hit by an attack, it will use its Stony Defense (Su) ability, as an immediate action, to gain hardness 8 until the end of its next turn.
For those who can see her, Dorianna makes motions obviously casting a spell while directing her attention directly at Malaz, but it does not seem to have any actual effect giving her obvious frustration.
"We should take door with spider markings, no?" Zranashta suggests to the group.
The arcanist pulls a potion from her pocket. "Do not forget have ready potions of protection," she reminds her friends. She also takes out a wand of magic missles.
Zranashta will drink her potion right before we open these doors.
Try Again: Yes, but if you ever roll a natural 1 while attempting to activate an item and you fail, then you can't try to activate that item again for 24 hours.
I've highlighted the part that says "and you fail."
In this case, Malaz did not fail his roll, so that rule does not come into effect. If you have at least +19 to Use Magic Device, you don't even need to roll, because there is never a chance of failure, even on a natural 1.
(Natural 1 is an automatic failure on attack rolls and saving throws, but not on skill checks.)
Zranashta uses five more charges from her wand of infernal healing, which after a few minutes will be enough to bring Cuethric, Remmy, and Malaz all back to full health.
Great rolls, Ijo. If I understand the rules on ability damage correctly, I think that means that neither Remmy nor Cuethric suffer any penalties on Dex-based checks now.
"Thank stars for Remmy!" Zranashta praises her companion.
DEX is not Zranashta's primary stat. Her AC is going to suck, but she can try to stay near the back. The only place it will really hurt is her snowball spell, which is about the only offensive spell she has left at this point. What I'm saying is: don't put her at the top of the list, but if you've got extra restoration, she'll take it.
Zranashta is going to start hitting everyone with her wand of infernal healing. I'm not going to hit Ijo Ibn Son, because he's a paladin. If anyone else wants me to not use the wand on them, let me know.
Beginning of turn, I will use Prescience. Prescience:1d20 ⇒ 17
Zranashta moves back into the hallway. Once again, using arcane gestures and ancient draconic words of power, she conjures a flurry of snowballs into the spider swarms.
Move Move into hallway Standard Cast flurry of snowballs. Again, I am boosting the save DC. flurry of snowballs:4d6 ⇒ (1, 1, 2, 2) = 6. Ref DC 19 half.
With a flourish and extravagant hand gestures, Zranashta speaks a few arcane words. Suddenly, a torrent of snowballs leaves her hands, filling the hallway with stinging cold energy.
flurry of snowballs:4d6 ⇒ (5, 2, 3, 6) = 16. I will spend an arcane point to increase the DC of the spell. Reflex DC 19 half.
Zranashta and spot then back away out of the hallway into the room with the banquet table.
"Everyone fall back and get out of those swarms!" Zranashta suggests unhelpfully to her friends.
Zranashta (and Spot) will delay until after Remmy. The only thing she has to help in this situation is a flurry of snowballs, but I don't want to hit my allies.
"We are not here for playing with corpse," Zranashta reminds her companions, impatiently. "We must find Spider. I suggest we delve deeper into lair." She points at the doors to the east and starts walking that direction.
Very pleased to announce that my 1st-level Parsantium adventure, Whispers of the Dark Daeva, is now available to buy for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. You can buy the PDF at drivethrurpg.com or Paizo for just $4.99
“A stirring adventure which gives the party a chance to make a name for themselves… It’s full of neat tricks to build up atmosphere and add to the realism of the town, as well as to provide a suitably creepy feel that grows along with the body count!” – Megan Robertson
“Each act and area in the adventure reads as well thought out, planned and as [if] the author has a real passion for what they’re writing and the world they’ve created – The Dice Trip
We spent a lot of time on layout for both versions to get the monster stat blocks on the same page as the adventure text. If you’ve run or read the adventure, I’d love to know what you think about this!
Parsantium is a melting pot, a cosmopolitan city where trade routes meet and great cultures collide. Inspired by real-life Byzantium with its rich Greco-Roman heritage, the setting is packed with characters, monsters and magic from the Tales of the Arabian Nights, ancient India and the Far East, alongside traditional medieval fantasy elements.
“Parsantium BREATHES authenticity and love—New York City meets Byzantium, modern metropolis meets swords & sorcery – this book actually manages to portray a believable, interesting, unique city that oozes the spirit of Al Qadim, early weird fiction and recent phenomena like the god of war-series, all while staying believable.” —Endzeitgeist
I’m very excited to announce that top fantasy cartographer Jared Blando has created a beautiful, brand new map of the wider world of Parsantium.
You can check out the low res version here – a full resolution version of the map is included in the revised PDF of Icons of Parsantium. If you have previously purchased this supplement, you can download the updated files with the new map for free from your Paizo or Drivethrurpg library.
Parsantium: City at the Crossroads is a melting pot, a cosmopolitan city where trade routes meet and great cultures collide. Inspired by real-life Byzantium with its rich Greco-Roman heritage, the setting is packed with characters, monsters and magic from the Tales of the Arabian Nights, ancient India and the Far East, alongside traditional medieval fantasy elements.
“Parsantium BREATHES authenticity and love—New York City meets Byzantium, modern metropolis meets swords & sorcery – this book actually manages to portray a believable, interesting, unique city that oozes the spirit of Al Qadim, early weird fiction and recent phenomena like the god of war-series, all while staying believable.” —Endzeitgeist
It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update on Parsantium: City at the Crossroads on these message boards so I thought it was high time I wrote something!
For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on Whispers of the Dark Daeva, a new 1st level adventure set in Parsantium’s Dock Ward, to be published in PDF in 2016 by Ondine Publishing. If things go to plan, this will be followed by a second adventure that can be played as a standalone, or the two can be used together in a Tales of Parsantium mini-campaign.
As the boat town of Flotsam gets ready to celebrate the Festival of Flowers, a series of violent murders threatens to spoil the upcoming festivities. When the PCs delve into what’s been going on, they uncover an ancient evil lurking below the city streets in the Hidden Quarter that must be stopped before more innocent people die.
My original plan was to write a short adventure of around 10,000 - 12,000 words, playable with Pathfinder, D&D 5e and 13th Age. Following on from some very helpful feedback on these boards, I’ve decided to write and publish separate versions of the adventure for each edition. Since then, I have been hard at work on the Pathfinder version and have been enjoying building some fun, crunchy NPC villains for PCs to battle in the adventure. So far, the introductory section (adventure background, synopsis and hooks) and the first seven scenes/encounters are written, with the manuscript clocking in at nearly 9,000 words. I’ll definitely be honing my prose on the second draft, but I've still got around seven to eight scenes to write, so it looks like the adventure will run longer than I initially expected.
The plan now is to get a playtest draft written by early January, before working on the 5e version. If you’re interested in running the adventure and providing playtest feedback, please let me know below.
I want the adventures to be usable by as many gamers as possible, so my plan is to include stats for Pathfinder, D&D 5e and 13th Age. I've been giving this a lot of thought, but would really like your feedback and have a couple of questions for you:
Which products have handled multi-system adventures well and how did they do it?
How do you like to see encounter stats presented in an adventure?
Please do let me know what you think if you get the chance.
Just thought it was worth mentioning the latest Bundle of Holding, Fantasy Frontiers, which features my book Parsantium: City at the Crossroads, as well as eight other fantasy RPGs and supplements. Several are compatible with Pathfinder.
This new collection of tabletop fantasy roleplaying games and campaigns takes you to exotic cultures and unusual times. Drawing from myths of many lands, eras of high intrigue, and even modern medicine, these games explore the far boundaries of fantasy RPG settings.
For just US$5.95 you get all three titles in the Starter Collection (retail value $30) as DRM-free PDF ebooks:
STARTER COLLECTION (US$5.95 - retail value $30)
– Spears of the Dawn (retail $10): Stars Without Number designer Kevin Crawford designed this old-school sandbox game based on African cultures and folklore.
– Castles & Chemo (retail $10): A remarkable D&D 4e/Pathfinder adventure inspired by a cancer survivor's chemotherapy.
– Ehdrigohr (retail price $10): This Fate-powered game inspired by Native American myth recently drew strong praise on Boing Boing.
If you pay more than the threshold (average) price, currently $17.96, you also get all the titles in the Bonus Collection:
BONUS TITLES (retail value $86)
– Spellbound Kingdoms (retail $10): Dark Renaissance fantasy where fashionable garb can take you further than a sharp rapier.
– Yggdrasill - The Lands of the North (retail $25): Scandinavian sagas power this complete RPG from Cubicle 7 Entertainment and the designers of Qin: The Warring States.
– Against the Dark Yogi (retail $15): Epic high-action dueling and mass battles in a land out of Indian mythology.
–Egyptian Adventures - Hamunaptra (retail $24): Green Ronin's massive D&D 3.x setting, the fantastic desert kingdom of Khoti.
– Parsantium: City at the Crossroads (retail $12): loosely based on Byzantium, Parsantium is a cultural melting pot with elements from the Arabian Nights, ancient India and the Far East.
Total retail value: $116.00
10% of your payment (after gateway fees) goes to charity.
There's a benefit to buying early. When new bonus titles are added to the offer, you'll receive the newly added titles automatically, regardless of whether you paid more than the bonus threshold. When you buy a Bundle of Holding, you never worry about missing books added later.
One year ago this week, Parsantium: City at the Crossroads was published after more than a year of writing, revising, editing, proof-reading, layout and design by me and my wife Kate.
I've written about how well it did in this post. Apologies for not cross-posting here but I don't think I can include the charts.
To celebrate Halloween, here are some really nasty gnomes from the Organizations chapter of Parsantium: City at the Crossroads. You can read more about Parsantium here.
BROTHERHOOD OF SPITE
Some gnomes are friendly little folk, renowned for their ability to make all sorts of wonderful things – clockwork devices, toys, jewellery and other finely crafted objects – and for their fun-loving sense of humour. Others have a nasty streak and take fiendish delight in causing misery and pain to the “big folk”. The pranks they play aren’t innocent jokes that cause embarrassment; instead, the aim is to maim or kill their victims. Fortunately, the first group of gnomes is by far the larger, but the second lot are present in Parsantium too and have banded together to form the Brotherhood of Spite.
The Brotherhood of Spite has around 70 gnome and goblin members, who moved to the city from their dark burrows beneath the Feyshore Forest over the last year or so. Every few weeks, the psychopathic humanoids gather in a secret location in the Hidden Quarter, wearing caps soaked in the blood of their victims, to share their deadly pranks and ingenious murder methods. The nasty little creatures are keen to outdo each other, both in imagination and in body count, although there is no prize other than bragging rights.
Here are some of the Brotherhood’s most infamous members:
Skorrif (CE male gnome wizard 11) is a toymaker and clocksmith who runs a shop called Wondrous Things up on the first floor of the Fonduq of the Nightingale’s Song. He has ruddy tan skin, white hair and glittering black eyes. Skorrif’s mechanical toys aren’t cheap, typically costing 5−10 gp each, but they are indeed wondrous things – the little birds can fly for short distances, the unicorns will trot across the floor, and the armoured knights swing their tiny swords back and forth. Although most of the toys Skorrif sells are delightful, some are decidedly unpleasant. From time to time, Skorrif sells an enchanted toy with a murderous life of its own; these horrible toys will seek to kill their small owners while they are sleeping and escape back to their master.
Posy (CE female gnome rogue 5/assassin 2) is an innocent-looking gnome with strawberry blond hair and pale skin, who hangs round in the busy fonduqs of the Old Quarter, pretending to be a little girl separated from her wealthy family. Promising a fat reward if her victim will help find her father, she lures him into a quiet backstreet where she stabs him with a dagger coated in sleep venom. The victim wakes up to find himself stripped naked and strapped to a wooden table in an old underground cistern. Here, Posy and her sadistic goblin sidekicks slowly torture him with blunt knives, vials of acid, hammers and rusty nails for many hours before leaving him for the rats to finish off.
Ressek (CE male gnome alchemist 4) is a stooped, elderly fellow with a shock of white hair and ruddy brown skin who sells brightly coloured candles from a handcart he wheels around the Mercantile Quarter’s markets. Most of these candles are perfectly harmless but some give off deadly fumes when burned, while others burn normally to start with before spraying furious clouds of sparks everywhere, liable to cause a fire.
The matronly Krisella (NE female gnome rogue 5/wizard 1) works as a midwife in the Poor Ward. She has dark brown hair tied up in a bun, mahogany-coloured skin and a kindly face. She is well-respected among mothers, helping to deliver babies of all races. Every so often Krisella will steal the real baby, replacing it with a changeling – a goblin disguised by illusion magic that fades after 24 hours. The real babies are never seen again.
Twicross Graveltoes (NE male gnome expert 6/rogue 3) is a bulbous-nosed trapsmith with wild tufts of green hair sprouting from his head and chin. Twicross makes deadly traps for nobles, merchants and criminal gangs seeking to protect their vaults from would-be thieves. Once his work is finished, he encourages his employer to test everything works properly with predictably bloody results. Zeno Meverel of the Golden Scimitars has put a price on Twicross’s head after he tricked one of his lieutenants into decapitating himself.
Very odd but I can only see this thread I started in the list when I am not logged in: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2pujc?Parsantium-City-Sourcebook-for-Pathfinder DD
The list also tells me there are 9 posts and I can only see 7. Very strange.
Any ideas?
Cheers
Rich
PS wonder if I'll be able to see this one in the Website Feedback list? EDIT: No, I can't!!
Some of you might know that I've been running a campaign set in the cosmopolitan city of Parsantium for some time. Parsantium is loosely based on a fantasy Byzantium with added Arabian, Indian and Chinese influences.
Since January I've been working on turning Parsantium into a decent-sized city sourcebook suitable for use with Pathfinder, D&D Next, 4e, and any other D&D edition/variant you like. The first draft is finished, weighing in at 88,000 words and I am planning to self-publish the book later this year, all being well.
If you're interested in learning more, please check out my website here
We're one session from finishing the Winding Way and the players are interested in going off and doing an adventure afterwards that will earn them some serious cash. At the moment, they are short on funds - mostly because they squander a lot of it on scrolls for the sorceror, diamond dust etc.
I have all the 3.x issues and am wondering which adventure (or site from an adventure) would best fit the bill. The PCs are 15th level (almost 16th)and there are five of them. I'd rather not use bits of the Shackled City or Age of Worms if I don't have to because I might run these for the group one day, but will do if I have to.
