I don't think gender really comes into it (except for corner cases, maybe, but that's an exception).

A lot of players just tend to always think of themselves as players and never really think of putting themselves in the GM seat, or are too worried they won't be able to be a decent GM. Applies to both genders.

This seems to be my experience as well. The ratio seems just about the same in my social circles as to Girl players/girl GMs compared to boy players/boy GMs. The fact there are fewer girl players in general is the root cause of a perceived lack of girl GMs. Figure out how to get more girls into the hobby and you increase the number of girl GMs.

Easier said then done, but let's face it, this is the sort of thing that either is handled over a generation or two by raising your children with an appreciation for the nerdier aspects of society, or is done all in one huge tidal wave because of some massive media sensation that made a fad out of some Roleplaying game. The latter gets results sooner but effectively drops off quickly as well and won't stick as well, and also really is hard to predict what can do such a thing.

Funnily enough I have started rereading bits of City of the Fallen Sky. I did so because of a couple reasons. First was to find Alaeron's rather wonderful simple example of how much of the uses the Technic League finds for the tech is very crude and based only on basic observations of what the obect does rather then pondering WHY it does that. The example was of how a tea kettle to a person completely unfamiliar with tea and tea kettles would be perplexed as to the purpose of the ting and if the screaming whistle of the steam meant it was some strange musical instrument.

Second was the fact that so far I have been feeling a bit let down with the technology guide, and Iron Gods when it came to a large amount of the tech thus far. Heck probably all of the tech. I really have not found any examples of items being used and implemented as something they were not meant for. So far everything just feels too much of your typical scifi setting tech.

I was REALLY hoping for a lot of technological relics that turn out to be mere 'parts' of other items and they full purpose is revealed piecing them together.

Also that line at the end of this post makes me even more confident that his mentor was an Android and it will be revealed eventually in this book.Rereading that book it just seems so glaringly obvious that she has to be an Android. Didn't that book come out long before the Android race was statted out? Love that foreshadowing.

Ok, I know i may come off a bit offensive for this but here goes. I feel a point is being missed here. Yeah there are few girl GMs, which i feel is more due to a combination of the fact there are already a few girl players and few players who GM.

I mean let's think about numbers here, in my gaming history I played with (wont count encountered/knew since my memory will be FAR from reliable for that :P) at least 8 girl players from my memory. 2 of those 8 GMed a game for me. On the male side I gamed with roughly, 24ish guys. Numbers are prolly a bit off for the guy players admittedly, but of those 24ish players, 5 of them served as GMs at one point and time for games I played.

In my personal experience, it seems the ratio of girl GMs to guy GMs is pretty close.

It's not that there are too few Girl GMs and there needs to be more, instead it's that there are too few girl gamers in general. Although personally I rather focus on the second point that arises from this ratio examination is that there are too few players who GM games and there needs to be more. Because maybe with more GMs in general regardless of gender, there will be less instances of being 'forced' to play with the only GM in the area who is almost completely intolerable.

And yes I understand that my personal experience is definitely too small a sample to be reliable ...

I remember the few times we got an insane magical item that was typically plot sensitive as a player. Now it may also have been due to the design of the games by the DM, but in my cases I and most if not all my fellow players only ever felt negativity to the player when the item was not of the intelligent variety.

Once again it is an odd lil coincidence I noticed that may be more then a coincidence. I think when the item was non intelligent it was JUST a powerful insane weapon to the rest of us, but when it had intelligence, we could refer to the sword as an entity, another NPC. Maybe that alone helped to make it's storyline import known to us every time we thought about it.

Maybe behaving like an NPC makes feel less like an object owned solely by the weilder and more like a member of the party as a whole, unlike when it has no intelligence and it's just loot that one guy has over the rest of the party.

Of course this is all conjecture but I would very much like to hear other thoughts on this observation of mine.

I love the idea of treating Sandru similar to Han Solo. Sauve and almost overconfident. While I legitimately considered throwing in a monkey-thing as a new NPC to interact with him, I honestly feel that would take too much away from having opportunities for the players to interact with him. As well as the issue of having people trying to translate the Vanara because they either learn Vudran or they take the language with a point in linguistics, or even people who question things by asking how on earth the NPC understands common when Sandru speaks it, but can't speak it itself. I would just have to explain away more then is necessary when at the end of the day, it is essentially just a quirky lil gimmick I add.

I am lucky, and also in the same light kind of 'challenged'. One of my players is playing a sister to Ameiko, as an older brother myself in real life this gives me PERFECT ammo for creating and initializing roleplay opportunities. I can really ham up Ameiko being the typical bothersome overly worried sibling to the PC, even refusing to allow the PC to leave her sight when the sister will express an interest to go with the others to kill the goblins. My plans are to try my best to poke the player into sneaking out. Then getting some expected scoldings and hugs of being worried.

Maybe it is just me but Ameiko having lost her father and older brother and if she finds out her younger sister wants to go adventuring, would most likely drop that rough and tumble girl personality and let out her caring side in this case. especially when Ameiko herself lost a dear friend during her last trip as an adventurer.

The challenge for me is perfectly balancing the two facets of this personality, the caring side for her younger sister and the rough and tumble owner of a tavern. How do I get them to flow into each other just right without seeming like two wholly different people, where it becomes more like she is wearing crappy masks rather then them both being who she is.

I'm at a loss to see what any of these 'Ameiko' threads have added to the entire discussion of this Adventure Path. I think that this thread should be closed and 3.5 shouldn't be allowed to open another 'Ameiko' thread.

Normally I don't like joining arguments like this, but I have to agree. We already, and finally might I add, had a LEGITIMATELY constructive topic on Ameiko that was created one day before this topic by 3.5 was created. Why create nearly identical topics when one was just recently made? Only reason I see is that one (by Lord Fyre) was meant to be more positive and constructive, while this one is essentially a copy/paste of the previous thread(s) 3.5 Loyalist posted before, which either got locked down or 'died'.

It is clear every time this topic questioning the 'mary sue' of a character is posted, it immediately devolves into debates that just don't add anything constructive to the Jade Regent Board in general and seems to just get locked in the end anyway. Not to mention pulling attention away from a similar topic that is actually legitimately adding to the board.

this is the topic I am referring to by the way.
http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz5xxc?Share-your-Campaigns-Ameiko-Kaijitsu

When I think of Shalelu and music, this is the first song that comes to my mind, but I am not too sure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR4TDBXebWc - Elm from Cowboy Bebop
Let me know what thoughts might be had on this one for her.

I am also going through and finding as many pieces of the Game of Thrones soundtrack as I can. Some of this definitely fit the first three sections of this Adventure. Songs related to the Starks or the North in general fit Crown of the World and sometimes Land of the Linnorm Kings. Songs for more southern characters feel like they could be used for Varisia or even Sandru.

C-C-C_COMBO BREAKER!!!!!!!!!!!

Indeed, I too concur with wanting to know about next issue. I might be able to contribute a thing or two, I am a game artist so I could contribute a model or two if I got the time.

Here's a 1.0 adventure to add to your list.

The Lost City - TSR

The first half or so of the module was rather typical and straight forward dungeon run, not too horror filled. It's when you got deeper into the dungeon, having to deal with 'helpful' people stab you in the back, and fighting a huge lovecraftian monster that will continue to regenerate from the indestructible horn he leaves behind when defeated, that things get more on the horror genre. There is a cursed scroll that permamently turns the reader into a mini version of that same lovecraftian horror and fights the party unless they got a remove curse. In order to destroy the horn, you got to use the cliche of tossing it into a volcano where the creature came from. But the volcano is in the middle of an underground city ruled by a cult who worships the creature and controls the population with drugs(refined mushrooms the drugged populace harvests). It was a shockingly in depth and dark module for only 30-50 pages.

Granted I am not sure how much the module actually gets in depth on these matters. According to my DM, the module was designed to be very vague on many things while giving some background info for the DM to flesh out.

Did not realize that Shade, very neat to know.

Here is a shocking little bit of info not many people realize. One of the main level designers on the first Doom game, who eventually went on to create the Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying game was a Mormon! How's that for not being your stereotypical stuffy religious type?

Also Nolan Bushnell, father of video games is a Mormon too.

I am looking to join something as well. Gonna be posting in that tavern topic to get posts for me.

I would love to see some sort of adventure dealing with the Land of the Linnorm Kings. Even better would be if it also involved Arcadia. Accompanying a Linnorm King on his final voyage towards Arcadia, something that sounds like it comes right out of the Epics of old, such as Beowulf, Sigurd, and even Odyssey.

I know this is probably WAY too late for ya, but one of my ideas was that my two animal companions would be an Ape and a Roc. They both would serve primary attack roles, and the Roc can serve as both a scout AND a mount, a mount that the Ape can ride. You do things right and give the Ape one boost to his intelligence this means he can take any player feat he meets the prerequisites for. This leads to giving the Ape feats liking armor and weapon training.

While this would consume a great many feats to work, you could vastly increase the lol factor(and perhaps broken factor) by having both the ranger and the Ape focus on mounted archery. Death from above.

You need a sixth player now or at least a cohort, to play a bard with skills in Perform Oratory. Why might you ask? Simple really, He will have Patrick Stewart's voice and narrate the adventures of the party.

Ignore them. Post it again.

Don't deal or negotiate with them. It just makes them feel important, and wastes time. If logic worked on religious people, there wouldn't be any.

Post your ad, and if they want to tear it down, charge them for the printing costs in small claims court.

Saying something like that makes you just like those two who tore down the flyers just because of a misplaced bias on a group as the whole because of a few cases. If you read things, A) you will notice he already started talking to those two and it seems to be going decently. B) You will notice that there are many on this topic who mention either they are religious or have gamed with religious gamers, clearly if we were not logical why would any of us be gamers? C) by not ignoring it and just simply posting more flyers again, he is having more success. Instead of just repeated a failed attempt, he is finding alternate ways to get the result he wants, and with the bonus of now having some ammunition for arguing his case.

@OP: Great job and congrats on your success at the park. Use that as a valid argument for the good that gaming can do to the community. And what's better is that the person saying this is of the same generation of people that tend to be mostly prejudice against DnD.

Yeah, it does tick me off slightly when a GM is automatically all mad at his player for knowing about the Campaign. That's the risk in running a published Campaign, someone is going to know something.

I can see where GMs are coming from in this attitude as I GM as well, but it's the case of you shouldn't forbid a player with no hesitation in playing the game. Instead I say you just keep an eye on the character, see what he does, mix things up often as well. In fact, I think as a GM one should always put their own personal flair into the campaign to keep things interesting, and as a way to keep more unknowns for players who might know a little too much.

many of us players who may learn about the secrets of the game in some way or form, strive not to metagame. Heck there are times that I keep my mouth shut on info that I probably would have figured out on my own anyway, but try to see if others can figure it out.

A classic example was when our GM ran a 3.5 conversion of The Lost City from first edition. At the end of the campaign was a huge massive boss monster named Zargon who was essentially an Elder Being. His horn was indestructible and as long as it existed he would regenerate in a few days. The only way to kill him for good was toss the horn into a Volcano named the Eye of Zargon. I learned about how to kill him from an article in Dragon Magazine that revisited classic Modules, and despite the OBVIOUS cliche 'toss powerful object into special volcano' scenario that was flashing it's obnoxious, fat, and naked butt at us; I still refused to tell my companions that I felt the volcano might be important to check out more.

And I was really pulling some major self control at how lifeless and static they were behaving by just taking reward and accepting things as they come. I was even having my character ask questions to the NPCs about the mountain and trying to get the gears in my fellow players' minds turning, but alas, nothing short of shouting it out seems to be able to have made them figure things out. Needless to say, we were walking around with a horn that could regenerate into a cthulhu-esque monster in our backpacks, seeking someone that might know how to destroy it. Eventually it was decided to be a 'good' idea to sell the artifact to a powerful wizard duke, who admitted that not only did he not know how to destroy it, but would never try to destroy such magnificent 'research'

Berinor wrote:

KaeYoss wrote:

Berinor wrote:

KOS

Could you please take the time to write the whole word(s)?

I didn't know KOS, so I looked it up on urban dictionary. Kill on sight was the second definition.

The first made you look like a pervert! ;-P

Now I'm curious but afraid to look...

Just a dirty word for something natural. So you don't have to be afraid of reading about some activity you'd never have thought human beings could voluntarily do to each other or themselves, or lose your sanity.

So totally unlike "prune handling"

Perspective, perspective, perspective. When on the internet, you should refrain from using text speak like rofl, especially if it is something you don't see often like lol. My communications teacher has this habit of purpusefully using text speak she knows no one would know, or even created on the spot by herself that has absolutely no original meaning at all. Then she records what everyone else thinks it might mean and their reactions.

The main focus to my arguments and suggestions is ROLEPLAYING in a 'realistic' and dark manner, and considering this Adveture path is set in Ustalav land of horror and dark things, don't ya think this is a good way to go about it?

Yes I know, it's evil, never once have I said it would be a good(alignment) action to go through with, heck I am not encouraging them in any way to kill the player. maybe I should add that if the paladin DOES see a reason to kill him, that player should roleplay it out that his life was saved so many times by the Dhampir that he can't do it. I am presenting ways in which they can continue to roleplay their characters as being wary around this companion of their's, unsure of what to do with the situation without outright being totally and actively hostile on the player's character.

Sorry for double post, but, you know what? I think that fifth player should be a combo breaker and not play as a castlevania inspired character but as a Ghostbuster. Not sure how, but I know that SOMEHOW it will be possible and needs to be done.

Why do you people feel they aren't roleplaying correctly? I feel they actually are trying to roleplay things 'realistically'. Natives of Ustalav are bound to be prejudice against dhampirs and the guide advises players to be natives.

Of course while it would be good roleplay that the Paladin wants to kill the Dhampir, in the end, that's ALL he can do. Paladins are not required to kill negative energy aligned creatures immediately, it HAS to be evil or performing acts of evil. I am sure it is good roleplaying to have him constantly suspicious, overly paranoid, but in the end searching for a reason and chance to be able to kill the Dhampir without breaking the code he swore.

The Cleric will be more of a problem. I like the roleplay idea of 'I must free this poor soul of his horrible life.' Unfortunately this means he will constantly be seeking ways to kill, and is not restricted like the Paladin. He still riskes an alignment change to evil for it.

What I would do is advise that player to instead of seeking an oppurtunity to kill, he will be trying to talk with this 'poor soul' and trying to 'subtly' persuade him to choose the option of willingly letting his life be taken, or seek some other possible redemption.

In closing, thumbs up for being realistic in the fact that their characters in all likelihood are unlikely to be super happy buddies with an abomination like a Dhampir. Unfortunately bad form to instantly say, 'gonna kill it immediately'

Shame that this is a Desna worshipper restricted class, but the 2nd level ability of the Spherewalker grants the ability to treat ANY Starknife as if it had returning, whether it was magical or not in first place. It also grants the longstrider spelllike ability once per day with the caster level equal to character level for better power strutting (Pathfinder #2). Unfortunately all the requirements will eat up much needed feats that you would need to get off the rest of the Belmont flavor.

Here's a PERFECT remix of a classic Castlevania song, just filled with that epic metal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm-erOna6o0

In case you haven't seen these already, check out the Serpent's Lash feat and the Prehensile Whip Trait, I have a feeling that the feat will be loads of fun as a Belmont type character in any setting, the prehensile whip's mileage will likely vary. Also, I am sure you definitely don't want this but there is also the Urumi, essentially a sword whip.

And remember, most important of all, if you charge or rush into combat, you aren't a proper Belmont. Belmont's power strut their way through the hordes of undead.

brent norton wrote:

Is anyone going to try to do a mini-adventure where they actually get to meet the Professor so to bring maybe an attachment to him?

My plan was to give each PC a level of an NPC class (Adept, Aristocrat, Commoner, Expert, Warrior) and RP each PC's prelude with the Professor individually through email about a month prior to the campaign's beginning (before they actually create the character sheet), giving them history to build on, as well as a direction to take their character.

Of course, once they take levels in an adventuring class, they can dump the level(s) of NPC classes. I've always found preludes a great way to get people involved and attached to their PC's (instead of the commonly rotated PCs you find in a lot of groups). This is especially true in a horror campaign when you want to establish particular mindsets and PC attachments so that you have more ways to build fear and suspense.

I plan to use this on one of my players in particular who likes to be obstinate. We've already been discussing the potential for this game, and he doesn't believe in horror in a D&D setting, so to prove his point he's making a paladin so that he's immune to fear, can cure diseases, poison, ability damage, etc... Thinking that's the only way to create 'horror' in the game. It's great that he can make himself immune to all these things, but perhaps not so much when he finds out his family and friends don't share his resiliency.

My DM actually recently ran a homebrewed 'level 0 campaign'. The reason for this was that we were all in an academy that was raising adventurers for it's own reasons. So of course we begin play with virtually just our intellinegce worth of skills, a HD and a few other small things and gained more benefits of the first level for the first couple weeks till we completed the first semester upon which we became a full level one and gained exp normally. Not sure if you can use some of the methods he used.

Candlemere can be a huge huge huge opportunity for you, with some tweaking. Also there is that rabble rouser from Pitax I believe, maybe have him hint at some of the dirty secrets.

Can you give examples of how this background information varies? I love doing things like that to my players.

One thing I would like to point out is this, there is a difference between owning a Restaurant and owning the BUILDING said restaurant is in. And believe it or not, but this sort of thing existed for a long time and applied to more then just obvious businesses like stores and restaurants. For example, I have an ancestor who owned a 'church' building but did not own and run the actual church itself. This was back in the Revolution war, but I know similar things date back to the renaissance.

Not sure if anyone may take this and apply it to kingmaker, just a different perspective to look at things with.

One thing I have told all my players before we start Kingmaker is this,

'Don't jump to conclusions about making your 'own' kingdom, you got to realize you are essentially like the explorers and settlers of the 1400-1500's establishing colonies in America in the name of a European country. The people building and establishing may have had freedom in setting up things there and making many basic rules, but in the end if they were practicing evil acts like satanism, you can bet that their sponsoring country WILL take action.

'Brevoy can and will remove you and replace you with someone they feel will run the country to their desire should you make it known to them you are doing things they would never approve of.'

Of course I neglected to mention that this becomes moot once the kingdom is large enough. It certainly did change the mind of the alchemist who planned on researching and testing Fleshwarping potions.

I am fine with evil characters running a kinda, as long as no one else knows. This of course means that pretty much no one wants to attempt evil, or maybe the fact a paladin is in the party has something to do with it

I am kinda shocked no one tried to make this argument yet.

In my campaigns I have always made this House Rule to the Assasins. They can be any non-good alignment to continue gaining class ranks. They WILL become the evil alingment upon entering the class due to the prerequisite of killing a person for the sole purpose of entering being a completely evil act. If they change alignments to one of the three non evil nuetrals, then they may keep taking class levels, fine by me.
One evil act does not make you evil forever, that is something many people I play with are quick to forget. Does the consequences stay with you forever? certainly.

Those were my feelings on it as well. I would rather it be one period, but if he is capturing animal after animal, then I don't see much other choice then to allow another get built. Hopefully this won't be a big problem till the end.

I was definitely thinking of having random events relating to it, and I like the idea of giving unrest for initial building. One reason I was going with the idea of expanding the thing over time would be giving a slightly higher economy bonus to signify that more and more people are learning about the zoo as it becomes bigger and are flocking to see it.

I was also thinking that they wouldn't be allowed to build a new zoo until they completely filled the last one, and that it would have to be located in another city or at least another district.

I also seem to recall on of the forwards mentioning the use of the APG base classes. I believe it said something along the lines that despite having the APG classes available in the form of the playtests, and the APG being released not too much longer from then, that they couldn't really put information regarding them in the Kingmaker series, but encouraged GMs to give thought about including them.

Definitely stealing these ideas.

Here are a few I had concocted for my players to run into.

This one is gonna be a long term prank of sorts, depending on how the players react. They will be wondering through the woods and come across a long log wall blocking their path that comes up to about chest height. Now there will be rocks in the front to act as step stones to give them a better height to lift up and over. The wall itself is actually a Silent Image, the rocks are real.
The players can choose to go around the log or go over. If they try to go over, their hands will go through the image as they attempt to put their weight on it, causing they to get unbalanced and fall off the rocks. But the prank doesn't end there. The fey will continue to place the EXACT same wall and rocks throughout the day in front of the players. If the players start to realize it's an illusion either from perception checks that they are all identical or from attempting to climb one, then chances are the PCs are going to get use to walking through these walls. That's when they run into a very solid replica of the illusion.

Another one would be replacing the contents of the bottle of the party's heaviest drinker with prune juice. Prestidigitation on the juice when he goes to drink to make it look and taste like booze. This will work best if he already had a bottle or two of actual booze. I plan on having the party being awoken now and then during his guard duty shift by extremely loud noises and moans of frustration at having to go so often.

And yet another I was thinking is 'liberally' granting one of the two fey use of the spell Magic Aura. Cast it on a ring or something similar that get placed somewhere for the party to find and watch the hilarity of them beleiving it to be a powerful magic item that is beyond their skills to identify.

Okay, one of my players in the kingmaker I will be running soon, came to me and asked if I felt it would be possible to build a zoo in their city.
Of course I felt this would be fine, but then I thought. "A zoo would definitely need to give some kind of benefit." But my biggest problem is trying to balance out an appropriate price and benefits.

One idea I have with ruling the zoo is that it is a building that is capable of growing bigger over time as they capture more creatures to put inside it. I was thinking, it would cost so much BP at first, then after they put ten or so creatures into it, they can expand the zoo into an adajacent spot for about half the price of the original creation cost. Of course the spots nearby would have to be vacant first and only a max size of 4 spots.

Any thoughts on this?

Backstory info: The player who came to me with this idea is a Summoner, but not any Summoner. Oh no, his character is a biologist by profession. His reason for her coming to the River Kingdoms is to research and study the beings that live in the woods. She will be proficient with nets and making use of injector darts to fill animals with sedatives to restrain them. Of course the Summoner's Create Pit spells, will be used heavily to this goal as well. Thus a huge reason behind the zoo is a place for research as all his universities she will be building will be focusing on biology.

Wait, are you saying I can easily manipulate the map with photoshop, even while it is displayed in maptools?

I thank you all for your advice. To me the easiest solution to the exploration thing seems to be to label each hex personally with a letter and number and have a list that I can mark down for my players.

I assume the map making will be easy, especially since I am using Kingmaker. I assume that maptools has a hex feature no? Now the tougher part that comes into play is dealing with the city making stuff. Do I just treat it like making a battle map normally but making new custom tokens?

But I want to have a somewhat easy DMing experience once actually running the game itself. Any advice on the specific tools you personally find extremely useful? Like I know the dice roller is nice with it's setup, and that there is some kind of character sheet function I can use. Any other tips you can think of that I may not immediately find on the wiki?

EDIT: Yes, the map making should not pose too much issue for me, the system doesn't seem overly complicated in that regard. What I can't seem to find is information on character sheets in the wiki, do the tokens have some built in character sheet function?

EDIT 2: I just realized, what would you advise in regards to mapping the Kingmaker hex map for my players? how would I go about making things hidden properly with it? What is (in your opinion) the ideal route to take in regards to both the mapping aspect and the aesthetic aspect for my players?

I was looking the most into maptools, but the problem is, I have no idea what to do with it. There is so much you CAN do with it, but to me all seems to require extra work. I just am not sure what route to take with it.

One thing that I am definitely planning on doing and have done before, is if the king in my PCs's kingdom is assasinated, then I am going to have the Assasin plant needles in the body. A set of Quieting needles to be precise, form council of theives. These nasty lil beauts get placed in dead bodies that the assailant believe will likely come back to life. The victim is resurected with needles peircing vital organs, causing extreme pain and agony, and a likely return trip back to the afterlife.

Could also set up a cult of anti-resurrection fanatics in the town, who plant the needles in every 'important' person in the city, especially if the PCs make a habit of resurrecting. It will serve a side purpose of bringing a side quest into play for the PCs to choose to uncover.

I am sorry if this has been asked before but I am trying to run a game online with my friends and I am wondering what program would work best? Something like Maptool, TTopRPG, but I would like to stress that freeware is absolutely preferred. I am confused by all these different programs and which can do what and what they can't do.