jay jackson's page

Many of you that frequent the forumns, or have over the past eight years may have gotten to know a user by the name of Ashiel. You probably have seen her all over the place from discussing world/ecounter building, projects made for the community such as Ashiel's Adventuring Guidebook, various posts and threads discussing world building, GM help, player help, revised monsters, revised spells, new magic items, new systems, the psychic monk rewrite, and promoting practical optimization and how it can further roleplay rather than hinder it.

Well they and their helpful exuberance for the game that we all know and love has been snuffed out. No he wasn't kicked out, she was banned. For what you might ask. Well to put it bluntly... Disagreeing with 'the powers that be'. At least that is the best explanation that we can come up with. Over what. Well this is the last post, made on Ash's Ask Me Anything thread, that was well into the 70th page of content and questions when the ban hit and the messages were removed.

It is my supremely upsetting duty to inform you that Ashiel the person that you have come to ask to speak with or ask mechanical or other RPG related questions of has been banned from these forums. The why is rather confusing, at least from my perspective.

It all started in this very thread when there were some messages that were, seemingly randomly removed. When Klara Meison opened a feedback thread to ask for/find out why those messages had been removed. Not only removed, but removed without any sort of explanation given. A fact that was acknowledged by the moderator who had done the removing. After asking for an explanation as well as certain messages to be 'given back' so that their content could be gutted for important material she was sent this private message

"Hi Ashiel,

I am reaching out to you because I can see from the posts in Website Feedback and your own “Ask” thread that the actions taken by myself and our moderation team have caused you distress, and would like to provide more insight into the situation from our side. Out of the respect for the privacy of other accounts on our forums, I cannot divulge further information than what was provided in Website Feedback regarding the posts that caused us to remove the chain of conversation, or actions taken on their account. I would again like to extend an apology if any ill-will was perceived by these post removals, and have included the removed posts from your account below, with the exception of the attributed quotes.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please let us know."

That last line is very important to why I am confused about the ban. You see I have known Ashiel for... Well forever... And she came to me very confused and bit upset over this ban which seems to have been brought on by her 'questions and concern'... They were as follows, verbatim....

"Respect to what privacy? Do you have any idea how hostile your moderation practices come off as? I cried today because I my voice to talk about issues that concern me and people like me was taken away, for no reasons given. We cannot follow rules we do not know. What drama were we perpetuating? How does removing our posts respect someone else's "privacy"? I've received messages in my inbox today where friends are leaving the Paizo forums because of what looks like outright tyranny and unexplained censorship.

We are hurting, Chris. In desperation after being constantly, consistently, and conclusively shut down over and over and over, I've taken to contacting other members of the Paizo staff in effort to get help against what a lot of people are seeing as a gross misuse of power. This cannot continue to go on like this. We still don't understand why this has happened or why things like this have continued to happen. If it was because Rysky threw a tantrum over a misunderstanding (which everyone else in the thread confirmed was a misunderstanding) you are hurting many people in an effort to alleviate the tantrums of a few.

We need to know why we are being treated this way. It's not alright.
Repeatedly silencing our questions and concerns and then offering vague apologies in private are not enough. I do not feel safe and secure on the Paizo forums anymore and I've been here since the Pathfinder Alphas. Every day I worry that I'm going to be suddenly banned for reasons I'll never even be told."

Well my friend seems to be psychic because the answer to his 'questions and concerns were met with a ban and this, non-explanation.

"You have been provided with answers to these questions and have been provided with the text of your removed posts for reposting as you see fit. That you are dissatisfied with the answers provided is not indicative of any conspiracy or “censorship.” Our moderators use their best judgement for given situations, and yes, since they are human, it’s possible to not get it right all the time, or to make everyone happy with those decisions.

Over the course of the last 4 years, our team has corresponded with you about how to post appropriately to our website. I’m sorry that it seems that we cannot seem to reach an understanding where you will be satisfied. It seems that the community environment that you are seeking is not the environment that we facilitate, as evidenced by this current issue, past removed posts and notifications, as well as a previous temporary suspension. At this time we feel that it’s for the best for us to part ways, and will be suspending your “Ashiel” account.

If you’d like to ever return and continue participating on our forums again, you will need to request that the suspension be lifted, and show to us that you have intentions of interacting in good faith and in a non-inciteful manner on our website.

Chris Lambertz"

I'm going to close this message saying that, I don't know why the ban was put in place. I don't know what instigated this action against my friend. What 'appears' to have happened is that a moderator, maybe attempting to head of what they thought was a problem, over zealously removed posts had nothing wrong with them. Then when cornered with an argument that she either didn't agree with or didn't believe decided that the only lasting solution to those who disagreed with her was to get rid of them.

P.S.- I will be making this a thread topic as well, for those not frequenting this thread but interested in the news of Ashiel's ban. I might be suspended or banned for this. I do not care. Peace out and Game on

So... This is troubling. For multiple reasons. But one is that it is the latest long line of issues with Paizo moderators making an effort to stifle opinions on their forums that either is against the company (in the form of it's practices or content) or against their social ideologies. Just my two cents.

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rxtz?-Ask-Ashiel-Anything = The Ask Me Anything thread.

Hello. Before we get started let me say first that I really do not and have never known whether or not someone can actually enchant an intelligent weapon within the rules of the game. I was however thinking about perhaps creating a set of house rules for it if their were not any in place to begin with. Now with that said I would appreciate some feed back.

Are there current rules in place, and if so what are they? Now I'm not looking anything verbatim here, just if there is give me a rough idea what they are, and how they pertain to the weapon in question (that is only if it is not blisteringly obvious). Also this can be from either Pathfinder or 3.5.

Do you think that such weapons should be able to be enchanted? I don't wanna turn this into a flame war, but some differences of opinion followed by a nice heaping portion of logic would be nice. Try to post to me and not the person that posted before you, this isn't a debate thread (start those on your own thread).

Would this be a beneficial addition to the already existing rules of the game? Again this is an opinion question so I expect that people will disagree, but have the decency to keep it clean.

I think that covers everything for now but as this goes along I may have more questions, so bear with me if you will.

Alright my DM was running the first segment of the Crimson Throne, and our party was finally returning the brooch to the queen when all of the sudden things went awry. See one of our players was playing a shugenja and one of their abilities is called "Sense Elements". Basically it allows him to sense for an element and then determine whether there is any of that particular substance within 10 feet all around him, then use a spellcraft check to determine certain things about the item itself such as whether it is natural whether it has anything in it, whether it is affected by magic, and even the exact nature of the item itself. With every extra round, it taking a standard round in order to sense the first ten feet, he can then expand his sense by 5 more feet in every direction. Now this compiled with the fact that the party stood talking with the queens personal body guard for several minutes basically made it to where our shugenja was able to determine that the queen was wearing an object that gave her the spell glibness and that her misdirection spell was placed on her body guard. This is basically where he turns to the rest of the party and asks for a quick conversation in which he departs all that he knows and then the party determines what to do. Well needless to say we were all ecstatic that he had found a way into the puzzle box that was the queens ruse. however when the DM started looking through the book for what the actions would be for her if confronted with the current scenario he could find nothing. Indeed it appears that a fair bit of the plot was unraveled at that junction. However he does not wish to change what happened in the least, instead he was asking some of us for ideas about how to handle this. I was curious, everything else that I have said aside. How would you deal with the current situation, plot wise mind you. Thanks for and feed back.

After seeing the dice for the Rise of the Rune Lords campaign I'm counting on paizo to pull out another awsome set for Curse of the Crimson Throne. however the description isn't quite as enticing as I would have hoped. Mayhap they look better than they sound?

Alright well I have to say that with the discovery of Pathfinder and the entire Paizo line I have been truly impressed. Especially when I heard about all the plans that they had in store for this relatively new system. I became still more impressed after I found out about some of the people that where on the Paizo team. One of the names that caught my attention is Ed Greenwood. Greenwood having my total respect for his contributions to the gaming world, and for his novels that came from those advances.

So this and the current changes with DnD going on at the moment, got me to thinking about my views on working with wizards of the coast. I had always planned to at least attempt to write for the Forgotten Realms series, but with my opinion of the changes made to the realms my plans seemed to drift in a direction opposite to my own wants.

Therefor I wish to ask the question that this whole post is leading up to. Does anyone know whether or not Paizo will be allowing people to create novels surrounding their new campaign? Will they be interested in creating an all new line of novels surrounding the new world of theirs? And if so who would I see about some information about the for mentioned new world?