jptheron's page

The Paizo Blog very recently included an unmarked map of the entire Smuggler's Shiv island. Print the large version out, and give it to your players when they come upon a full map :)

Thanks just downloaded it. That will be a great help.

Thanks DQ...

Those are the kind of ideas I am looking for. I am very keen in starting the Serpents Skull Campaign... It reminds me of the old D&D adventure - The Isle of Dread :)

How would you deal with that? Maybe a coastline map with no markings of the interior? I mean that would surely be available?

Well the question is not whether it is 'broken' or 'not'. The question is whether your GM wants to include that character in the campaign.

A GM fully has the right to determine what character types, how much magic, what spells and so on to include in the campaign.

Personally I do this more for 'flavour' than for 'stats' but each to his own.

Hi guys. Just a question that has bothered me for awhile. In my old D&D group mapping was always a headache.

Scenes really got slowed up because the mapper wanted to draw really accurate maps.

Also in the wilderness, for example Serpents Skull no 37 what is your approach to mapping.

Do you tend to make basic crude maps or do you try to recreate the GMs map?

How do you expect the GM to describe things to you regarding drawing maps.

I really want to not slow things down with detailed maps but want the players to have a usable one?

Any ideas?

Great ideas. I love the 'bloodied' idea and also the idea of using at least 2 senses in a description of an area.

Yeah thanks for the ideas. They are all good. Also what I used to do in my old D&D days was to only allow a certain amount of carried weapons, equipment and so on. Almost something like in Baldurs gate.

But I didn't limit the PCs from looting an area once it was cleared of monsters and so on. Then they would use their pack animals to carry all the loot cross country.

It made for some interesting encounters where wild animals would attack the pack animals and the PCs would have to defend them and prevent them from bolting and running off into the wilderness.

I have some difficult questions regarding encumberence.

I understand the rules in the Core Rulebook and how it affects movement, but my problem is what about characters that want to carry away everything including the kitchen sink?

It is one thing walking away with 50 pounds of gold coins but what about when they want to carry the dining room set? How do other GMs deal with this problem? The same problem applies for characters wanting to carry 10 spears or swords... Where do you put them all? No-one has pants THAT big!

I have no problem with PCs bringing a few pack animals with them on a journey, as long as they don't act like pack animals themselves!

Also in the old D&D rules there were rules concerning what you could fit in a back pack, sack and so on? I cant seem to find them in PFRPG?

We used to have a house rule where the PC had to be able to describe exactly where and how he was carrying everything, expecially extra weapons.

Any ideas?

Surely there must be some GMs out there with ideas regarding this? Or is this question in the wrong forum?

Simple answer to the paladin, anti-paladin debate...

LIFE IS NOT FAIR :)

And in anycase the good guys need to work harder... its character building!

Hi guys. I am pretty new to these forums. I used to be a DM in my younger days with the old D&D boxed sets. I played a bit of 3.5 in my University days. But now I would like to start a serious PRPG campaign using the Kingmaker campaign to start with. I find players get bored playing the same campaign forever so I will probably start another campaign later on.

However I have two questions which I hope exxperienced GMs can answer:

(1) I am much more confident now and I roleplay very easily using accents and voices. I would like to know how do most GMs narrate the story and talk as NPCs... Do you give lavish descriptions everywhere the PCs go or only at important places? Also do you talk in the first person with ALL NPCs or only the most important ones? I remember my very first D&D games EVERYTHING was in the 3rd person - even the players talked in the 3rd person.

(2) Regarding combat. I always found it very hard to narrate combat in a way that fits in with RPG novels. In D&D combat sometimes MANY blows can be traded before an opponant falls. Your left knee can only be slashed so many times before being reduced to ribbons. What I used to do was to ignore the HP and AC in narrating combat and only described crippling blows and heoric strikes once HP were very low. So the reduction of HP was more a reflection of fatigue during a fight. However this does not fit in easily with the rules of the game though? Any thoughts/ideas?

Regards,

JP

Thanks Ravenmantle.

I think the best thing to do then is to try to buy what I can as complete sets one by one - and just get PFD versions of what I can't get.

Any ideas on printing PDFs so that they look good? Willing to take it to a printer myself?

Regarding Pathfinder Adventure Path.

Hi I recently subscribed to Pathfinder Adventure Paths and am planning on running a campaign exclusively using this content.

The problem is I have only started my collection from the Kingmaker. I obviously want to start from the Rune Lord. However I notice that many issues are only available in PDF.

Is there a way I can get the entire collection from number 1 in print?

Kind Regards,

Jean-Paul

I haven't DM'ed for a long time but from what I remember during my OLD D&D games (using the red, blue, green boxed sets) I used to let the players run companion NPC's mainly because I had so many other things to think about.

I would keep an eye on the situation and if the PCs had the NPCs do something very dangerous or stupid I would use a 'morale' check to see if the NPC would continue. I would keep these checks within context, for example if the being was magically summoned and under a wizards control it would be VERY hard for the being to disobey. However if it was just a hired mercenary I would even add penalties to the check. If the PC really pushed his luck I would even allow the NPC to runaway... punishing the player for his rash actions... after all and NPC is a thinking being not a robot.

The important thing was to be consistent. It added a random element as sometimes I found it hard to be 'impartial'.

Finally in role playing situations I would DEFINITELY take control, but if the PC instructed the NPC to behave a certain way in an upcoming conversation - to lie for example - I just played the part the best I thought fitted the story line and the NPCs character.