jaaronfarr's page

I picked up the anniversary edition Runelords campaign and am starting it up with one group soon. In fact, I got so much interest, I have enough players for two campaigns, so that's what I'm doing.

While I could just run two versions of the Runelords campaign, I'd prefer to run Runelords plus one other Varisia-based AP so that I'd have the option of the characters bumping into each other, or hearing about each other. The question is then: which other AP?

Shattered Star is out since it's in the future and I may want to run it with the two groups after this current campaign.

I've done a lot of urban campaigns, so I'm a bit urban-ed out, thus I'm leaning towards Second Darkness over Crimson Throne. But Second Darkness has a mixed reputation. Is it really that bad? I've seen some ideas of mixing up some of the two APs. Does that work?

Thoughts?

Came across this thread randomly. I'm going to have to go back and see if I can dig up my old maps of Ptolus on the Isle of Terror, but you can get a sense of them from this document:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10f8Sz19nv-A7LG3yhHbI30Ctj6wi0UpcFgU4fZr Qoe0/edit

Have you thought about running Curse of the Crimson Throne?

The first three adventures are solid gold. Running them concurrently and then changing the climax of the third book ought to work.

Ah, that's a great suggestion. So many options...

I go back and forth on whether to have a strong story game or a more open ended dungeon crawl / set of modules. I really like a good story arch, but I'm worried that we won't have time to finish it.

One twist I'm considering is tying together the real-world time limit of one week with a similar in-game time limit. For example, the players have one week to accomplish/prepare/discover something before the next weekend when, ready or not, some cataclysm comes about. It's a twist I've never had a chance to play and could make for a very interesting game.

Several of the Paizo modules are part of a multi-module arc (or can be). Crypt of the Everflame is one such example. That'll be far less than an adventure path, but more than a single module.

Everflame is a good suggestion. I'll read up on it.

At this point I think I'll go with either Ptolus Banewarrens or a modified Kingmaker adventure path. For Kingmaker the premise would be the players have one week to prepare their fledgling Kingdom for a battle/war. That could be fun, or it could easily fall apart. So still thinking about this.

How are you at improvisational GMing?

Decent, I hope. I tend to eschew miniatures and run sandbox-style campaigns in my own homebrew setting. I find this style frees up the game for more impromptu adventuring. That said, I've leaned on published material in the past. My last major campaign was based on Ptolus, which I love.

Given that I don't have a lot of time for prep work, and I know this "marathon" will take a lot of prep work, I want to get ahead as much as possible by using a published adventure or campaign. I may turn to Ptolus again (though that's still a lot of work), but I've been wanting to run an Adventure Path campaign for some time. So I thought this might be a way to do it.

[Not sure if there's a better forum for this, so I'm dropping it here.]

I'm considering running a marathon Pathfinder campaign between Christmas & New Years. I figure I have at least 40 hours worth of play time available. With that, I'd like to run as much of a complete story arch as possible. Given my available prep time is limited, and that this is a single, one-off event, I'd like to use published adventures as much as possible. Suggestions?

I've thought about modifying one of the Adventure Paths, but I'm not even sure if that could work. Seems like running an Adventure Path would take at least double the amount of time I have (and even that's optimistic). Is it even worth trying to compress an Adventure Path into a week of intense game play? Does one particular Adventure Path better lend itself to such meddling?

If not an Adventure Path, then what?

Sorry to ask this but what time is it currently over in the US?

Just trying to see when the pdf release time is going to be along with the fact its going to be "very" busy once they do!

1:00 PM US Eastern is 17:00 UTC. Check out what that time is in your timezone here.

Been making maps and reading the PFRPG all day and I'm tired! sorry if this doesn't make much sense.

Thanks for all the work. A few months ago, I did a couple of map projections like the last one you did (the flat one) and it looks fairly similar, so I think you're on the right track.

It would be really great if we could get a proper Google Earth overlay. Something that the community can download, run in Google Earth, and comment on. For me, as a DM, this sort of thing really helps me get my head around the scale, climate and geography.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but the Pathfinder RPG is currently at #1 for the Role Playing & Fantasy category and the Science Fiction & Fantasy > Gaming category. It's at #774 overall.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/16211/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_2_3_last

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/16211/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_2_3_last

Can't wait to get my hands on my copy.

Might want to try nearby gamers or meetup.com

All of which is saying that there are MANY compelling reasons to handle the maps like we currently do. Would it be possible to change those reasons and how we handle maps? Sure! But certianly not this year, when we're also launching a 576 page RPG and a 320 page bestiary. We're too busy!

What about a community mapping project?

I've often thought it would be interesting to create detailed maps for Pathfinder using tools that could allow community contributions such as:

• Google Earth and Google Sketch-Up.
  
• Second Life
  
• Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2
  

Personally, I'm particularly interested in the idea of using Sketch-Up and Google Earth. I think it would be less work than the alternatives and would let more people participate.

Imagine a Google Earth layout of Golarion that lets you see not only the world map, but markers for adventure path locations, and sketch-up models for entire cities. Given a large enough community and a few years of work, it could happen.

DM_Blake wrote:

<snip>great ideas</snip>

That all sounds awesome... except.. once again the rules get in the way. You could not cast an antimagic field that reaches into the ground, because emanations need line of effect. Once it hits the ground it stops.

Going back to the antimagic field: I've used that in similar cases. You can construct areas that effectively act like a "moat" around some secured area. The field doesn't need to go through the ground, just fill open rooms or areas around which you want to protect.

Also, for dungeons, keep the 3 dimensions in mind. The interior chambers of pyramids might give you some ideas.

/sorry for the side trek, jaaronfarr!

No problem. I'm always interested in how long it takes others to run adventures. I wish publishers would provide some ballpark figure. Sometimes I'm looking for something that runs 4 hours and other times something that runs 4 sessions.

But 30 hours of gameplay per adventure path issue does sound like a lot. Then again, that's a great bargain!

It's interesting to see folks now saying they preferred the original artwork, but not all that surprising. I liked the original as well. I like this version better, but still. That original piece of artwork had more complaints about it than pretty much any other piece of art we've published under Pathfinder, which is vexing as well because we've published a LOT worse! :P

You can't seriously expect to make everyone happy, can you? :-)

I can see an argument that the race lineup artwork sets the tone for the races and thus gets more scrutiny. Personally, I think both versions are great.

Supposing I wanted to develop my own campaign in Golarion, without using the AP's, which resource would be more useful to me in learning about the world - Pathfinder Chronicles or Campanion. Is one designed to be more AP specific and the other more general?

Don't discount the APs, either. Each volume has short chapters that can be used completely independently from the campaign. Topics include specific cities, deities, races, etc. I didn't expect so much material and I've been pleasantly surprised.

Is this useful as a sort of "player's guide" to Golarion or does it reveal too much?

I'd like to have something to hand to my players other than the large campaign setting book. Is this it or is there some other product? (and yes, I know each Adventure Path has it's own player's guide).

Kindle only works in the US. I'm not a US resident.

Nearly 500 bucks for something I basically get for free in a book is about 400 bucks more than I'd be ready to pay.

Apple's not an option, either.

The WhisperNet feature doesn't work outside the US, but everything else should. So it's still functional. I'm outside the US as well.

Also, the form factor is much different than a laptop. Reading an e-ink display is an entirely different experience from a LCD.

Still, I agree the price is high.

Were goblins chaotic evil in 2nd Edition, or am I remembering that incorrectly? Also, are Pathfinder goblins chaotic evil, given their "impetuous" (read: looney-toons) nature?

Not sure about 2e goblins, but I like the idea of chaotic evil goblins in Pathfinder. Makes sense.

Seconded. Something I just can put a PDF - any PDF! - on and look at it like I would look at it at the PC.

And now Amazon introduces the Kindle DX: 9.7 inch screen, built-in PDF support. $489.

Though I wouldn't be surprised if Apple unveils something this year as well.

Does anyone have any statistics on this?

The society scenarios can be completed in a matter of hours. The adventure paths spread out for a whole campaign. So what about the modules? Do you tend to complete them in one session? Two? More? How many hours?

Thanks!

Conversely, I've always hated dwarves in just about everywhere....

I do hope Paizo can do better (though the dwarven god Torag is the most uninspiring in the whole Pantheon).

Perhaps it's not original, but I always liked having completing tribes of barbarian dwarves and higher technology dwarves. But I know dwarven technologists has been done.

So, you want some original dwarf ideas? How about:

• Dwarves as a sort of hivemind, almost insect like society. The live underground, right?
  
• Dwarves as primarily a psionic race. Make 'em intellectual as well.
  
• Dwarves as as merchants, with mafia like crime syndicates.
  
• Dwarves as religious fanatics. Pick your favorite fundamentalism.
  

Honestly, I don't find it too hard to add flavor to dwarves. They have an expected niche, yes, but there's still a lot you can do with them.

I find it harder to break the elf stereotypes. What crazy elf ideas do you have?

• Elves as evolved humans from the future.
  
• Elves as creatures experiencing time backwards.
  
• Elves as always mentally disturbed. Perhaps multiple personalities, passing down racial history.
  
• Elves who age only as they use magic as it eats up their life force.
  

The orcs definetly come across as chaotic evil and the hobgoblins as lawful evil. That's because they are.

So I checked my 3.5 monster manual and, yep, they are. How is it that I've not noticed that before? I guess most adventures or modules I've played didn't seem to make a large distinction between the behavior of orcs and hobgoblins.

This is just why I like the Classic Monsters Revisited so much. Breathes life into this creatures.

Is it just me, or do the Orcs come across as Chaotic Evil while the Hobgoblins come across as more Lawful Evil, or at least Neutral Evil. I can't find anything about this in the book itself, so perhaps this is just my imagination.

Seconded. Something I just can put a PDF - any PDF! - on and look at it like I would look at it at the PC.

It's not color, but you can check out the iRex Illiad. Or the upcoming TechCrunch Tablet.

What Ross Said.

Further, while there's a chronological order implied by the adventure paths in that they come out in a one-after-the-other pattern, there's no established game world canon about that...

We might put easter eggs in-between adventure paths now and then, but the "official order" in which they're played is left to each individual group to determine and decide.

Thank you. That's the way it should be. I'm a firm believer of keeping rules, settings, adventures and stories (novels) fairly independent from one another.

One of the things that bothered me about RIFTS back when I collected just about every book was the setting and rule books slowly became more and more of an integrated story. Books became increasingly dependent on one another and there was little separation of setting material and adventure material. If you're campaign didn't happen to follow the particular story, later books were mostly worthless or required shoehorning to work.

If I want a long ranging story, I'll buy some novels. If I want an campaign, I'll purchase an adventure path or some modules. And so on. I like to think that it's my responsibility as DM to tie those adventures and modules together into a unique world and history for my campaign.

And finally, there's nothing wrong with dropping continuity between adventure paths or campaigns. It's a game. It's not like you have to start a game of Monopoly based on how the last one ended.

XML -> XSL -> HTML for a text heavy product is the way to go. Standalone XML can be used to generate many ereader compatible formats, and does allow for things like reflow of text.

Developing this kind of platform/product is cost prohibitive, and probably well outside Paizo's core competencies (no disrespect Vic).

Yes, the XML publishing route is preferable. The tools don't have to be expensive, they're just not user friendly. There are number of open source XML pipeline projects (such as Apache Cocoon) that can be done to put this together. However, my point is less about XML vs HTML as it is about the screen readability and navigation of web sites versus PDF as a digital version of a work.

And I can definitely understand Paizo's position as publisher and why moving to such as tool-chain would be unlikely. Just looking at this website is a reminder they are a online retailer and not an online publisher. Paizo.com is basically and ecommerce site with everything else shoehorned in.

We are setting up a meeting with Amazon to look into this, but a lot of the details as far as pricing, payments, and percentages are still up in the air. We're asking because Paizo customers are asking us, but nothing has been decided yet.

Good luck!

Personally, I've been seriously tempted to drop skills altogether and go with something more along the lines of C&C's SEIGE system. You can give the core skills to their respective classes as class features (survival goes to barbarians and rangers, spellcraft to wizards, etc.), but then otherwise, just let anyone try anything and test it against attributes with an experience level adjustment.

It's so much more flexible and easier to explain to players. The range of possible actions doesn't feel so arbitrary and it removes the video game like feeling in which players are restricted by the game engine (no, you can't jump over that 2 foot wall or swim across that shallow pool).

That said, for the existing system, I'm happy to give players more points. Skills add flavor and are less unbalancing than most other aspects of the game.

I allow my players to have wish lists of items that I consider for placement in adventures. It allows them input and the possibility of customization without me putting everything in a store. Of course, the don't always get whatever they wish for, so there's some give and take.

I've also run a Ptolus game and I think Monte solved these problems with the Dreaming Apothecary and the "used items" stores. The used items were useful for lower levels and when you got into higher level, more customized stuff, you could directly order it from the mages.

Finally, I've never been very happy with the necessity of magic items in 3.5e. It just adds complication and I've always been worried out unbalancing things by allowing too many or too few items. I'd be much happier if the role of magic items were simplified.

Micco wrote:

Hopefully someone will come up with a pdf e-book that shows complicated pdfs correctly.

I vote for that!

I've seen an iRex Illiad tablet. They're expensive, but PDFs work just fine on them. I've haven't tried out an image-heavy document, but my friend has an Illiad and I'll see if he'll let me test it.

One thing to keep in mind is that these e-ink based readers (Kindle, Illiad, Sony Reader) have fairly slow page refreshes. You cannot easily flip through a book and thus the sort of reference book style navigation that often happens with RPG books would still be clumsy even with a large e-book reader.

But put me down on the list as someone who would love to find a solution, be it a good ebook reader that supports PDFs or a decent enough non-PDF format for other readers.

Personally, I think HTML is a good solution since it gives the author and the reader lots of flexibility. I've always thought that RPG books would do better as a website than as a PDF. Just look at how easy it is to navigate Dungeon-a-Day. Moreover, HTML is designed for reading on the screen instead of PDF which is still designed for print. Give me a subscription website for all Pathfinder materials with decent navigation and you've got a customer!

In addition to the ones I mentioned before, I picked up the entire Adventure Path line so far. I only started looking at Pathfinder recently, so I started this sale with nothing but the beta book. Now I've got most of the line. The sale was a great excuse to catch up.

Now I'm thinking about which subscriptions to get...

Speaking as a 7-year player in Monte's personal Ptolus campaign, I think the best thing to do would be to replace Geb as a concept with a city-state based on Ptolus. Switch out the ghost Geb for Ghul, and go to town with it. I'd basically dump the Osirion-colony part of Geb's backstory, play up the international trade element to make it less monocultural, channel the Gebbite undead stuff into intrigue in the city's graveyard, and off you go...

Heck, another easy idea is to swap it out for Magnimar in Varisia, and make all of the major ancient players Runelords.

Thanks for the great ideas Erik. I've put these thoughts on Ptolus in Golarion (3 options) in a public Google Doc.

And let me add another vote to Aureus for official Litorian support.

It's pretty likely we'll NEVER get around to exploring every corner of the Inner Sea region; heck; we spent a year and a half in Varisia in the APs and haven't even explored every corner of Varisia itself! There'll always be parts of the world left open for GMs to build on as a result!

The Inner Sea is large. It's interesting to take it and place it one a modern map of the earth to give you and idea of the scale. The Inner Sea is significantly larger than the Mediterranean, for example.

While we're on the subject...

At the moment, my favorite choices are to either have Ptolus and the surrounding world of Preamal be on the far side of the World's End Mountains or to drop Ptolus on the Isle of Terror.

In the first case, the World's End Mountains thus line up with the Cherubar mountains and you can drop Monte's setting in pretty much as-is. It's effectively a world away anyway. Still, it does offer some chance of allowing characters to travel between settings.

However I'm starting to like the idea of using the Isle of Terror even more. Ptolus is actually a fairly new city built on the ruins of two evil empires. The Isle of Terror fits well as Ghul and Tar-Baphon become the same character. Eslathagos Malkith (the Dread One) is so ancient, he can be set as-is during the Age of Darkness. The isle is remote enough one can take a lot of the Ptolus setting directly (including Litorians). You can also place Dretas Phantas as a city taken from the shores of Kyonin.

Of course, I'm a late comer to Pathfinder and I'm still getting up to speed with the setting, so perhaps there are some better locations I'll find later.

Although I'm a HUGE fan of Ptolus (and Freeport, for that matter), we won't be officially placing either of those cities in Golarion. There are implications in each city about the makeup of the world surrounding it, and while it's a relatively easy thing for someone to place either city in Golarion, in doing so you'd either have to change some fundamental things about Golarion (such as adding new races or increasing the presence of firearms) to make the city work, or vice versa by changing something fundamental about the city to make it work in Golarion. In either case, you basically have to adapt one of the settings to fit the other.

We'd rather let customers decide which one gets adapted, so that everyone can retain the world flavor that they prefer, rather than making that decision for them, which is what would happen if we officially placed either city in Golarion.

I figured as much, but still, it was worth a shot to ask, right?

While I'm still a little ways from showing it to anyone, I'm putting together some ideas on the various options on how to integrate Ptolus into Golarion.

Can I add one more suggestion then?

I know Paizo will likely continue to publish chronicle books about the larger Golarion world and planets (and you should!), could you still leave at least some corner of the world as officially unexplored? That way it is at least a bit easier to drop in cities or even countries from other 3.5 settings without shoehorning it too much.

Oh, and James, many thanks for taking the time to actually answer my crazy proposal! :-)

I know Monte has been peripherally involved in the Pathfinder RPG and Pathfinder is currently sponsoring his Dungeon-a-Day project. These are all signs of the great goodness.

But the very best product Paizo could create for Pathfinder Chronicles would be a Ptolus conversion book. Yes, I know this would require licensing from Monte. But if there were any way to have Ptolus "officially" adopted into Golarion with Monte's blessing and the Paizo touch, that would be all the more awesome.

Ptolus, for me at least, is the quintessential 3.5 setting. Properly marrying that with the Pathfinder Campaign Setting would not only allow Ptolus to live on, but eliminate the perpetual shoehorning involved in homebrewing the combination.

I can easily imagine that Monte is not interested, but it wouldn't hurt to ask, would it? :-)

HERE'S WHAT I'D LIKE INSTEAD-

How about an inexpensive PDF Only Product, with layers that I can toggle on and off. I believe you can do this, and someone with Reader can just toggle the laters on and off that they want to see.

I can understand those who want high quality battle maps and handouts. However, most of my playing is online on forums or chatrooms, so I have little use for large scale posters or maps. Thus I have not purchased the subscription and tend to get PDF only products.

For me, I would be much more interested in a digital product along the lines of what Watcher described.

In fact, while we're on this little wish list fantasy, I'd love to see a Google Maps or Google Earth version of Golarian.

You're right to be worried about rules bloat.

I want to add another vote for what KnightErrantJR pointed out: I already have a lot of 3.5 crunch material. I would rather purchase campaign material, adventure paths, or books like Classic Monsters than additional rule books.

I don't want to re-purchase 3.5 rules with Pathfinder branding. There are already great supplements on psionics, mass encounters (wars), alternative magic systems, and so on. Isn't the point of Pathfiinder to let that live on?

If you are going to publish a rules book, make sure it's fresh. This particularly goes for psionics or alternative magic systems. If you are going to rehash something, build on it, don't duplicate it. There's a great foundation of 3.5 OGL material out there. Pick up some of the gems (like the Malhavoc Press stuff) and update them for Pathfinder. Don't be afraid to just reference good existing works.

Finally, another vote for _not_ scattering rules across dozens of books. Keep classes and races in player handbooks. One thing I never liked about 3.5 is that you'd find some interesting class mentioned in some supplement, but then never mentioned again. If you're going to introduce a class or race, support it and tie it into the core.

All I had before was the Pathfinder Beta book, so I picked up quite a few items:

• Pathfinder Campaign Setting
  
• Classic Monsters Revisited
  
• Darklands
  
• Dragons Revisited
  
• Guide to Absalom
  
• Elves of Golarian
  
• Modules D0, D3, J3 and LB1
  

I'm still getting through the Campaign Setting. Classic Monsters Revisited rocks!

So, is there anything else I should have picked up? I haven't yet dived into the actual adventure paths. At the moment, I have more than enough adventure material. But was wanted to get a clear feel for Golarian as I'm thinking of merging some of it into my Ptolus campaign.

Gary will be getting some help in May. Stay tuned!

-Lisa

That's great news Lisa. I have huge hopes for Pathfinder and look forward to seeing this grow.

I'll admit that one of the reasons I haven't dived into Pathfinder is that I find the website almost impossible to navigate. The Paizo website feels like a ecommerce store first and foremost with everything else as a poor add-on. It took me more time than it should have for me to figure out what Pathfinder is, what the various products and subscriptions are, what the difference between them is, and so on.

Can I offer a few suggestions?

Pathfinder, the rpg, needs a home that *isn't* an ecommerce site. It needs a clear, clean, uncluttered, please for the love of god as few links and sidebar crap as possible, nice site. Don't even dare look to WotC as an example. It should be the community hub and a great reference for players completely new to the game.

While I'm at it, let me add my own wishlist for the Pathfinder website:

Personally, I'm not interested in hardcopies. As much as I like them, I move around too much and don't have the space. I would much, much rather invest and play an RPG for which the material is online. This is one reason I'm so excited about Monte Cook's Dungeon-a-Day.

For me, the ideal RPG website would have all materials online including rules and adventure modules. Not as PDFs but as actual web pages as PDFs are, let's face it, more difficult to read on screen than web pages. Most importantly, the site would include a searchable database of all spells, monsters, magic items, etc. I would gladly pay a subscription fee for such a site.

In fact, I could imagine a site and set of tools in which each account is a sort of personal bookshelf and database. I might only have access to the modules and web pages for which I've subscribed or purchased. Purchasing a module or book would include access to the crunchy bits in my own account database. For those that worry about offline access, it's still possible to provide PDFs or even some sort of desktop client.

Pathfinder is already becoming a solution to the problems WotC left behind for D&D. Could the Pathfinder site also be an example of DDI done right?