jow's page

I'm still in the race to be The Last).

Yay! I'm out of the race! Thanks everyone!

I hope you all get at least a glass of champagne from your boss, when the last issue of PF is packed :-)

I suspect it's more a case of Lisa & Vic handing a few glasses to the rest of the staff... As far as I know, a "CEO" is the highest rank in a company, so there's probably no-one above Lisa (except owners and/or shareholders possibly).

I've no idea where a Technical Director fits in, but since Paizo is a relatively small company, I suspect Vic's not so far below the CEO. :)

Anyway - please do have a little celebration... after sending out the last few copies & PDFs (I'm still in the race to be The Last).

I was one of those who complained so ... uh ... loudly on saturday. Obviously I've had some time to think since then, and, more importantly, to analyze what really upset me about the whole situation (and just to get it out of the way: the TPFG situation, although completely unrelated, certainly was one part of the reason, but let's ignore that in this thread).

It's not the fact that it will take longer than expected for me to get the PDF. It's not even the fact that some people got their PDF sooner than me (not even now that it turns out I'm among the last few to receive it).

It mostly comes down to a matter of fairness, or rather a (perceived) lack of fairness. Speaking strictly for myself, it was the fact that some had been actively chosen/selected to receive their Pathfinder PDF before me that got me so upset. Of course I know there are perfectly rational and acceptable reasons for the decision to process US domestic subscriptions before international subscriptions, and yet it felt (and still feels) unfair purely on an emotional level. If the subscriptions had been processed in an entirely random order, I think I wouldn't have been half as upset as I was.

Such an irrational (and in fact unfounded) feeling of unfairness may seem like a small thing, but for me, fairness is right at the heart of D&D, and I guess it's the same with many D&D fans. I know I'd never stay in a game, investing one precious evening per week, if I knew for sure that the game master or one of the other players was being deliberately unfair (with the possible exception of some minor tweaking by the game master, just to keep the game fun and interesting).

That being said, I think that the proposed changes for Pathfinder #2, in particular the idea to set up two parallel processing queues for domestic and international orders, are definitely a step in the right direction.

Thanks for listening/reading.

For those wondering whether it is an issue with combined shipping, I thought I should point out that I opted for my GameMastery modules to be held to ship with Pathfinder, yet I still got access to both pdfs earlier today. So maybe it's not combined shipping that's the problem? This first issue of Pathfinder is a transition issue for me, in case that helps.

It's probably not an issue with combined shipping... my order doesn't contain anything other than Pathfinder.

hmm, still no Pathfinder for me.

No mail here, and nothing on the "my downloads" page. *sigh*

Now I know how it feels when Santa passes you by without filling your stocking. :)

Small town in northern bavaria? That's what, Franconia? I also come from there, maybe we even met each other before?

Yep, I'm from Hammelburg, currently living near Wuerzburg (most of the time). It's highly unlikely we've met tho - I've been playing with the same group of friends for the last... ummm... ten years or so, and I've never been to a DND convention.

We feel it's best to try to communicate accurately.

And I really appreciate that.

We really hoped that we'd be able to finish out all of the international subs on Friday, but after getting through about half of them, we ran into a major problem that only Gary can fix, and he's incommunicado until Monday. Once he fixes it, though, Lisa and I will go down and help the warehouse crew finish processing them (even if that means we don't go home Monday night).

Well, if you had told us that on friday, I bet you'd have been spared a lot of criticism. I know I wouldn't have complained the way I did if I had known about the reasons for the new delay. It sounds like the poor guy really needed his rest... and by the way, as far as I'm concerned no one's required to work day and night to get me my pathfinder faster: not Gary, not you, not Lisa, not the warehouse crew.

With respect to the other things I wrote (giving PDF access to pre-paid/credit customers) I'm still completely baffled why your processes should be so slow (mind you, I'm not trying to criticize you or Gary or anyone else, I just don't "get it"). A modern database system with a few million database entries shouldn't need more than a few milliseconds per access, so even if there are dozens of operations per subscriber, you should be able to process several subscriptions per second. I think someone mentioned something like 50000 pathinder subscriptions in a different thread, so even at a leisurely 4 subscriptions per second, your systems shouldn't need more than three or four hours(!) to process all pathfinder subscriptions (not counting things like printing labels and sticking them to packages and stuff). If your setup can't do that, I'd say you've got a hardware and/or software problem, and Gary definitely needs some relief (another software guy to take some of his workload might be a start, and perhaps consider giving him at least one free weekend per month :-)

Wohoo! Dungeon 149 arrived in Munich...but I think TPFG is really in over their heads, they sent with my adress but forgot my name, so the letter was left near the letterboxes (fortunately he is used to lots of people moving in an out without notice, so he leaves every delivery there for some days until it is clear that they are not claimed). So be careful that you do not miss your delivery due to this fact!

Same thing here. Dungeon 149 finally arrived yesterday (Germany, small town in northern Bavaria), and the adress was incomplete (no name). You don't happen to have an umlaut character somewhere in your name...? Because I suspect that might be the reason why TPFG were unable to print mine...

So I guess there's still a chance I might get #150 too.

Yup, not a fair comparison, totally different scale of operations I would guess.

Of course I realize there's a huge difference between my Dungeons being late and my Pathfinder being late (I've been following those threads for quite some time). Unfortunately, from a customer's point of view, the end result is the same: I have paid for Dungeon 149, paid for Dungeon 150, paid for Pathfinder 1 (as part of my Dungeon subscription that was converted to a Pathfinder subscription), but I have received none (so far).

If any other company treated my like that, I would not buy from them again, ever. Paizo however is a different case: I have had very good experiences with their customer service before, they have tried to explain where the problems are, and I truly believe that they are at least trying to fix those problems.

There are, however, limits to my patience.

My gripe is really about mis-management of expectations; I'd have been far happier if Paizo had just said "We're just not going to get these out to you until the w/c 27th, there are too many logistical problems."

But it's mostly been "well, we're doing our best and they should all be out by tomorrow." every time this doesn't happen it creates more bad feeling.

Agree 100%, that's one of the more frustrating aspects of it. It's been quite frustrating in The Case of the Missing Dungeons (beginning to sound like a Perry Mason mystery :-), and now something disturbingly similar is happening with Pathfinder #1 (although hopefully on a much much much smaller scale and for entirely different reasons).

However, it's their first run at this, I'll wait until #2 to decide whether it's worth continuing with the subscription service. If the Gamemastery modules are another delaying factor, I'm definitely dropping that subscription though.

I already know I will continue until the end of the first Pathfinder adventure path (mostly because I converted 13 remaining issues of my Dungeon subscription into it). Right now I'm not at all sure I'll continue beyond that, unless I see some pretty big improvements by then.

That's the main cause of my frustration with the Pathfinder delay: unlike some of those who have already received it (possibly even received the hardcopy by now), I already paid for it months ago in the form of my (now converted) Dungeon subscription! In fact Paizo officials themselves have repeatedly stated that one of the reasons why they have to go through this bizarre process of printing labels, sticking them on packages and then charging the customers' credit cards and then giving access to the PDF is the fact that they are not allowed to do it differently. But my credit card was charged months ago! So why do I still have to wait? Why can't Paizo have a look at their customer database and give access to the PDF to everyone WHO HAS ALREADY PAID FOR PATHFINDER 1? That'd also be a nice surprise for Pathfinder 2... hint, hint

You're not alone. Frankly, those promises of "most of the international orders will be processed by tomorrow" (when was that "tomorrow" initially? Wednesday or something like that?) are beginning to sound a bit empty when there's still no sign of the PDF arriving by saturday.

Oh, and of course still no sign of dungeon 149 & 150 on top of that.

I'm really seriously considering to sign up with Wizards and their online continuation of Dungeon and Dragon instead of continuing my Pathfinder subscription beyond the converted issues... (but their (Wizards') track record doesn't look so good too - f*ing up their DnD4 countdown website like that). :-(

And I'll move to Austria in one week.

What about the last Dungeon and Dragon issues?
I can't change my shipment address anymore in the "my subscription) section! The last two issues wouldn't help me that much here in Germany after I moved to Austria.

There's a useful service called Nachsendeantrag. If you don't know what that is, visit the Deutsche Post homepage and look for Nachsendeservice. I'm not 100% certain that they will send your mail to Austria (foreign destination), but it's certainly worth a try.

First of all - thanks for your comments and clarifications.

Scenario 2: Nowhere in the scenario does it say that the buckets weight 5 lbs. I think you were focusing too hard on the part where it says the ducks cannot "hitchhike" in the buckets (...)

You're right, I was mistaken about the weight of the buckets being given as 5 pounds; on the other hand, I can't imagine those glass buckets being much lighter than that. A standard (European) 1 liter glass bottle weighs somewhere between 800g and 1000g (approx. 2 pounds), and a glass bucket big enough and strong enough to be used as a glass "shoe" will certainly be much heavier than such a bottle, wouldn't you agree?

Scenario 3: The Daern's instant fortress was designed a little different from the norm specifically so as not to harm the contestants. (...) However, I saw no need to point out the differences to the players ahead of time - they can use the item's description in the DMG as written.

This is where my group really messed it up - they read the description in the DMG quite thoroughly and decided that they couldn't use the Fortress to lift the egg. Which didn't surprise me at all, because I had just the same reaction when I saw Scenario 3 for the first time. I gave it to the group unchanged because I wanted to hear their opinion after playing it. As I wrote in my original message, nothing in the DMG suggests that the instant fortress will NOT do damage to things above it, and from a player's point of view it's an incredibly high risk to "just try it"... if you're wrong, you end up with one hell of a lot of scrambled egg (and zero points). They were not desperate enough to try, even when they were seriously low on time.

As for the acceleration of the roofline - well, if you're going to use real-world physics against me, I'm going to have to concede defeat. :) Honestly, I didn't worry about it - it's magic.

Yeah, well, that's a group specific problem... the group I'm playing with has a strong scientific background. There are two doctors (physics, computer sciences) and some other university degrees (computer sciences, maths, chemistry, economy). You wouldn't believe what I went through when I tried to run a Star Wars campain. :-)

Scenario 4: On page 94 of the magazine, it specifically states: "The staff of divination is 7 feet long, with a forked tip." The information is provided to the DM so he can provide it to the players. It was not intended that the players should have to ask if this was the case.

You're right. My mistake.

Scenario 6: Horseshoes of a zephyr "allow" the horse to float above the ground, but the description in the DMG doesn't state that they always do so. Perhaps it's just the way we've always used them in my own experience, but we always just assumed (...)

That's the problem with those assumptions. They're different for everyone. On a good day, the Dungeon editor(s) should have noticed this (that's what I tried to say when I suggested more playtesting).

Just for the record, we did have lots of fun playing the Challenge of Champions VI, and we're looking forward to all the future Challenges you will (hopefully) put together for us Dungeon readers. I particularly enjoyed seeing my players mess up Scenario 6 (Horseshoes)... because they ignored the first instruction. They even made a few smart-ass jokes about being bright and ignoring it. Doctors and diplomas, scientific background and all that, remember? Watching their faces when I pointed out instruction number 14 (after their time was up) - that was truly priceless. :-)

When running my players through Challenge of Chamions VI, I found a few problems (or perhaps I missed a few things...?)

Scenario 1, Snakes and Ladders: what exactly prevents the PCs from levitating to the ceiling and propelling themselves forward using the ceiling? Granted, the walls are too smooth to climb, but this is not "climbing" the ceiling... a very small amount of friction would be sufficient to cross the pit in this way. When the first PC has crossed the pit, he can just take off the boots and throw them back to the other PCs.

Scenario 2, Duck, Duck, Goose: a 5-pound bucket is the absolute maximum of a heavy load for a raven (tiny creature)... and it can still fly with that?

Scenario 3, Egg Toss: The description of "Daern's Instant Fortress" states that anyone "nearby" takes 10d10 damage from its expansion. How are the players to guess that "nearby" doesn't include "right above"? And even if they suspected this, the Instant Fortress grows from (basically) zero size to a height of 30 feet in just 6 seconds, that's a speed of 5 feet per second... a bit much for an egg, wouldn't you agree?

Scenario 4, Tag: Just a minor problem here, the DMG says a Staff of Divination "often" has a forked tip... so the players must think to ask the DM what shape this particular Staff has.

Scenario 6, Horseshoes: The Horseshoes have no command word. So why doesn't the black horse start the scenario already levitating, thus giving away the magical nature of its horseshoes? Or, in other words, what exactly is supposed to trigger the levitation effect?

Scenario 9, Old Maid: A minor oversight in the description... the first paragraph includes the statement "... her hands are tied to two of the thick vertical bars...". The end of Marilyssas introduction however states, "With that, she puts the gag over her mouth...". Oops. I suppose the extra pair of arms drops to the ground right after putting the gag over her mouth. :-)

I suppose a bit more playtesting might be a good idea...? It was still a great adventure, but it could have been better. Particularly the scenarios 2 and 3 were made extremely difficult because of that... well... sloppiness.

Oh, one more thing - anyone interested in a German translation of Challenge VI? I have made a complete translation of all the introductory scenes for the ten scenarios, plus abridged translations of the solutions and notes. I'm willing to put those on my web pages - if someone from the Paizo staff grants the permission to do so... *hint* *hint*