el_skootro's page

Hey all --

My group in our semi-sandbox campaign has decided they want to recruit the local dwarves and elves to join up in a mission to kill the BBEG, an extra-planar super orc.

Does anybody know of an adventure that involves recruiting armies? Maybe from two groups that don't like each other much? Any edition is fine.

I have a fair idea of what I'll do, but its always nice to sift through a published adventure for ideas.

Thanks!

(And sorry if there's some other forum that's better for this question. I don't come to these messageboards so often anymore.)

I'm thinking of running a campaign centered entirely in Kaer Maga. Other than City of Strangers (natch), does anyone have any resources or adventures that can be easily ported over? I can deal with switching concepts over from other editions, I'm just looking for ideas as to where to start.

Currently, I'm thinking of ripping off a lot of Freeport and Ptolus, but that's about as far as I've gotten.

I'd love some advice on good urban adventures that would feel at home if transported to Kaer Maga.

Has anyone made a blank map (without the letters and dotted lines) of the map on page 23 of Racing to Ruin?

Thanks.

Hey DMs -- anyone have a write up of what info you gave the players to represent what the found in the temple at the end of Souls for Smuggler's Shiv? There's not a clear listing of what exactly the players will know, and I'd like to be as precise as possible. Especially useful would be a copied and pasted email you sent to your players.

A clarification on rules needed here - in the Advance Player Guide it says regarding the Energy Body revelation for Oracles that:
"You may remain in energy body form for a number of rounds per day equal to your oracle level."
So does that mean at first level I can use this ability once per day or that I can only use it one round at a time?

When I try to subscribe to the store blog, I get a nasty xml page: http://paizo.com/store/blog&xml=atom

Is this temporary?

I have a player in my STAP campaign who wants to start taking levels in the Master of Masks prestige class. The class fits really well for him (he's a thespian with levels in bard and swashbuckler) and he loves the idea of getting different cool abilities, but mechanically the class is ... wonky.

We've decided to up the BAB to 3/4 and to give him two "favored masks" that basically give those masks a bit more power:

Has anyone actually used this class in play? Does anyone have any opinions on how this fix would work?

Thanks in advance,
El Skootro

I didn't see this anywhere else here, so I thought I'd let everyone know that Adamant Entertainment will be producing an RPG set in China Meiville's Bas-Lag world.

El Skootro

I just posted this to my blog, but since that's more of a space for my personal thoughts than a public forum, I thought I'd repost it here. It's a bit inflammatory because of the religious stuff, but I hope people will look beyond that and understand that I mention religion to be comparative, not critical.

Game designer James Maliszewski has compared OD&D holdouts to the Amish: they're willfully ignorant of current trends and like to just keep playing their game without any newfangled contraptions like "thieves" and "weapon proficiencies." 1E holdouts are likewise compared to Puritans: they know about the changes in the game and have a jolly good time telling everyone and anyone who will listen why it is inferior and wrong.

I'd like to extend his metaphor a little bit. I think that the 3E "grognards" are a bit like the mega-church attending evangelical Christians. They're basically trying to marry a righteous devotion to an original text with a world that is so far removed from the original text as to make it extremely abstruse. In the same way that it cracks me up to see the current Conservative Christian movement rail against the "War on Christmas" when the Puritans -- who are, at least arguably, their antecedents -- made laws banning the celebration of Christmas, I'm amused when I see people arguing that 3E represents the "true" spirit of DnD. Or that 4E will chuck everything that makes DnD what it is out the window.

DnD was created as a rules set for playing war games with wizards and goblins. A lot of Leiber, Vance, Howard etc., concepts were ported (sometimes wholesale) into the game and some Tolkien was grafted on, and that was the game. But it became something else. DnD became its own genre distinctly removed from those authors. With that process, DnD influenced and was influenced by numerous other sources. 3E was, when it came out, the most recent iteration of those influences. It had some Leiber, Vance, and Howard still, but it also had some anime. And some Indiana Jones. And a ton of other stuff, most of which I probably don't recognize. In essence, DnD had built its own self-referential mythology that separated itself by several orders of magnitude from its own source material. Of course that process didn't start with 3E, and it won't end with 4E, but each edition change represents a sort of punctuated equilibrium in that process.

I really don't know if I'll switch to 4E. It does seem that a lot of changes are being made from the 3rd edition of the game and I don't know whether I'm ready to make all of those changes. I do know, however, that I don't consider 3E to be the litmus test of what is and isn't DnD and that 4E will be just as much DnD as any other edition. There are plenty of arguments against any particular gaming group converting to 4E (e.g., enjoyment of the current rules system, an unwillingness to spend more money on new books) but claiming that 4E is in someway a betrayal seems to me to be, on the face of it, ludicrous.

El Skootro
*edited for clarity's sake

Perhaps I've been reading to much Lovecraft lately, but my campaign has drifted into Cthulu-esque areas already and my FLGS has an awesome colossal Cthulu mini (mini is hardly the word for a foot and a half tall monstrosity). So I'm thinking of taking my STAP in a completely different direction. We're currently on HTBM, and I've dropped a couple of Demogorgon hints (basically foreshadowing the Lemorian Golem). My plan is to really play up the demogorgon connection so that the players are ready to take out a demon lord. However, before they start to make alliances with other demon lords, I'll subtly encourage them to take on demogorgon himself. Once they try, demogorgon will basically say, "fools! Our enemy is not from this reality!" My hope is that teaming up with demons will seem like a more logical (and maybe Good) choice when the PCs are presented with something truly terrifying like Cthulu. After all, the text from the alienist prc in the Complete Arcane says:

Places far worse than Hell exist in the multiverse, and even demons have more in common with characters than the entities that exist outside what is known, a mere glimpse of which can drive the sanity from someone's mind.

My homebrewed world has many Lovecraftian elements and the PCs have already encountered some wacky far realms stuff (with one losing his mind completely).

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to integrate this (pretty large) change? I'despecially lve to hear from James Jacobs, architect of the STAP and big Lovecraft fan.

Cheers,
El Skootro

I have a dragon shaman in my party who desperately wants to meet a dragon. I know there's a dragon turtle and some planar dragon things, but I'd like to introduce a regular old claw/claw/bite wyrm. Currently we're in Ft. Blackwell (where we've spent about a month and a half in RW time thanks to a DM [yours truly] who got a little happy with the details of what should have been a minor stop-over), but we should be leaving soon. Since the characters are pretty high on the xp scale right now, I'm gonna skip a bunch of stuff and send them right to the Sargasso.

Does anyone have any ideas for modules that could be dumped either onto the Isle of Dread or onto an island before we get to the Isle that would have a dragon as the main antagonist?

Also, has anyone run the Dungeon Crawl Classic Bloody Jack's Gold? It looks like it fits thematically and might give the players a diversion while they're exploring the Isle.

Also, I don't have any of the Dragons with the "Savage Tidings" articles but if one fits the above requests I'd be happy to pick it up.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Cheers,
El Skootro

My apologies if this has already been covered, but I couldn't find anything through a search of the messageboards.

My party just finished the Bullywug's Gambit and are recuperating in Sasserine before heading out to the Isle of Dread. One of my players is very curious about the Isle and especially about the Olman who live there and wants to spend the next few weeks researching the Isle and its inhabitants. She made a lucky knowledge: geography roll, so I told her that the Isle is inhabited by large beasts, and a queer group of un-"civilized" people remarked upon for their proests' use of zombies.

I don't have any of the Dragon magazines with the Savage Tidings articles, but I may be willing to pick one up if there's one with a great deal of information.

So, my questions are, what kind of information can I give that would flesh out the Isle and maybe foreshadow some of the events to come? What issue of Dragon has this kind of information, and is it worth it to get it?

Thanks in advance,
El Skootro

Back in my day, people "played" games. Now they just "game." When did that happen?

Just asking.

El Skootro

Hmmm...

Does this mean that I'm qualified to be an astronaut now?

Oh happy day! I think I'll go have a drink.

El Skootro

I don't know about anyone else, but I frequently check the front page to see what new message board topics have been posted. This generally works great except that a lot of the most frequently updated threads are PbP. Is there a way to separate those posts from the rest of the message board posts? Is this a problem for anyone else?

Cheers,
El Skootro

Hi all. I'm interested in playing in the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path. My group (which I DM) just started on Savage Tide, so it would be a while before they get started on anything new. I'll be getting the 1st Pathfinder and will gladly hand it over to whomever would be willing to run the game. That said, I have some pretty specific needs:

A gaming group composed of people older than 25 or so (I'm 30).

No rules lawyering. (I can't stand having the drama of a game break down just because someone needs to find out exactly what the radius of a stinking cloud spell is.)

A game either in Brooklyn or Manhattan.

I know that I'm being picky, but it's just because the new AP looks awesome and I want to make sure that it'll work out.

If the above sounds like it'll work out, please email me at skooter3 at gmail dot com.

Cheers,
El Skootro

My most recent post shows up when I check my recent posts, but it's nowhere to be seen on the message boards. Is something up?

El Skootro

So I was in a funk for a month after I found out that Dungeon and Dragon were being cancelled. Now I find out that my alma mater will be closing? When did I become the subject of a country song?

El Skootro

Hey all. Hope someone can help with this. I'm going to start running the STAP for the third time (previous two times were stalled out). Of the players in the group, one has played through to Here There Be Monsters, and two have played through to the Vandorboren vault. The player who's played through to HTBM is going to have to deal (she's my wife and she knows what she's in for), but I'd like to rearrange things a bit at the start for the other two players (the fourth has no experience with STAP).

I'm thinking of starting off with the meenlock adventure that was in one of the last two Dungeons, and make Lavinia someone who was imprissoned. Essentially, I'll make it so that Vanthus had her thrown into jail instead of having her killed off like the rest of the Jade Ravens wanted (lavinia doesn't realize this -- she thinks she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time). In order to clear her name, Lavinia will ask the PCs to seek out some legal documents that lead to the ambush under Parrot island.

Does anybody see any problems here? If there are problems, does anybody have a any suggestions?

Thanks,
El Skootro

The *official* Lords of the Boards thread is interesting ... but it's a bit self-serving for my tastes. While I do understand the need for a community to recognize its most important members, I'd rather see it done in a more representational and -- dare I say -- democratic manner. So, without further adieu, I present the Paizo "Lord of the Boards Proportional Representation Election System" (LotBPRES).

The rules are simple:

1) Vote for your favorite posters in descending order.

2) I will tabulate the current votes every Friday. (Three points for each 1st place vote, two points for each 2nd place vote, one point for each 3rd place vote).

3) You may not vote for yourself.

4) You may vote for me as many times as you wish.

5) Comments and/or explanations following the votes are encouraged and expected.

6) We will discover who truly are the Lords of the Boards.

And now onto my votes:

1) Peruhain of Brithondy. Peruhain brings an intellectualism to the boards that is sorely lacking from many posters. I especially appreciated his comments on gender theory vis a vis James Jacobs' concept of the transvirtual character. Huzzah Peruhain!

2) Heathanson. Nobody does sarcasm or in-character postings as well as this guy. His only weakness as a LotB may be his inability to defend himself against silvered weapons, including the infamous silvered tongue (lashing).

3) James Jacobs. How cool is it to have the editor of Dungeon magazine posting on these boards? Too cool I say. Too cool.

Cheers,
El Skootro

Someone mentioned running the STAP as a sci-fi game, and the more I see of it, the more I think it would be great in a space opera type setting.

I've also thought that AOW would be intriguing to run in a post-apocalyptic setting.

Has anyone else had similar ideas? Outside of the traditional DnD world, in what fantasy genres would the various adventure paths fit? Any specific games or systems?

El Skootro

Hey all, one of my players has decided that it's about time to step on over to the other side of the screen and DM. He's not super experienced (about 4 or 5 years worth of play), but I think he'd be a natural DM. Can anyone recommend good primers to help him cross the divide?

Cheers,
El Skootro