knightnday's page

Anyway.

If there are people that are interested in "dark" or "mature themed" subject matter for the game then there is always the early material from Paizo as well as a trove of stuff for earlier versions of D&D included in modules and issues of Dungeon and Dragon magazines. There should be enough in all that to keep most games busy for months if not years.

Not sure if this will reach anyone through the current arguments and I know it isn't what is wanted (Paizo to continue what they had been doing and/or create new APs on the subject) but at least there is something there for you to brainstorm off of if not lift wholesale.

I disagree. There has been and can be a community. Right now, however, we have a number of folks that seem unhappy with the rules of the community. Rules are important for a civilization and a community and one of the big ones here is Everyone Has A Right To Exist.

There is no middle ground. There isn't room for discussion. It is a decided fact and once people understand that then the community can begin to heal and grow.

If one believes there is room to discuss this fact then perhaps this community isn't one that is good for that person. There are many, many, SO SO MANY places on the internet where you can discuss this fact and say whatever you want. This isn't the place for it, and no amount of pushing at the fact or annoying the mods is going to change that.

Edited to add: Not to say that there aren't other problems here, but the current wave of transphobia and inexplicably slavery have caused problems here.

Although there may be the same few people talking, as remarked above, there are a large number of us that are silently watching and waiting as well. We have not forgotten about this. It is still "a thing" and will continue to be so until something is done about it.

Given that the discussion on the law firm has gone on for a bit, I'd think it would be in Paizo's best interest to have Aaron (or someone) make a brief statement saying "Hey, these guys were recommended and while they don't say that they've done this sort of thing on their web site they have in fact done X number of cases and are aware of what is needed to make everyone feel comfortable that they are doing their best."

Otherwise it leads to the speculation that we're seeing and intensifies the bad feelings that build up.

Thank you.

The risk being that their are other forums, Discords, Reddit etc where posters can go if banned. It’s not like the early days of the Internet where it’s one and only one forum to go too.

This is true. There are tons of places to go if one want so-called "Wild West" rules and say whatever one wants and not suffer the consequences. Of course, the downside is that one cannot cause mischief and flout rules or attempt to make others feel bad here.

Thank you for this.

Hello, all,

I opened up a critical priority ticket to resolve the issue whereby new aliases/organized play characters will have their base names autogenerated from a user's full name, leaking that information unless the user manually adjusts it.

Obviously this behavior is entirely unacceptable, and I will personally ensure we expedite and push the fix as quickly as we possibly can.

Thank you very much for the quick action and attention to this.

So the update boils down to we are taking steps and hired some folks to look into it. That feels like this isn't going to be dealt with in concrete terms for some time with all the investigating and looking for people to talk to and whatnot.

That still leaves all the problems and problematic behavior on the table in the meantime.

I doubt delaying the post will save any work for the mods. Instead of debating the merits of the announcement you'll have people debating what will be said and how far it will or will not go.

I support the workers. I wish them all the luck in the world.

And Yoshua is correct: stay on target and ignore the noise. The amount of people coming in late to chime in without a clear understanding of what has been going on undermines any qualifications they might have in a field or subject.

I do not think anyone is getting what they want no matter which crowd they happen to be in.

We are currently finalizing a job description to fill a vacant full-time HR position. You’ll see this posted in the next few business days, and we’ll be looking for a candidate with expertise in diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is important to all of us that this professional can help us to maintain Paizo’s shared commitment to our values in recruitment, hiring, and daily operations.

This right here is very very important. Without someone really paying attention to HR and applying impartial and detailed outlines of what should be done and not done as well as what steps will be taken in case of violation of said policies you have a situation where you have to trust that everyone involved will be on their best behavior and any violations will be handled fairly.

That trust seems to be sorely lacking given a variety of the posts from past employees and (while not as important to some people) the customer base. If the customers don't trust that you are carrying forward with the stated values of your company then the least problem you will have is chatter on your message boards. Given that we're seeing this story spread to Twitter, Facebook and non-Paizo websites this isn't something that is going to be easily forgotten or fixed with a PR spin of "We sure will try better in the future."

As for those who don't care about the people that are behind the screen/work for the company and just want their games, consider this: not dealing with the problem will slow down productivity and possibly result in many of the products you might be looking forward to being delayed or removed altogether as talent moves to other shops or the lack of employee/customer engagement makes putting out as much product less than productive for Paizo.

It affects everyone, and suggestions to just get over it are not helpful nor useful to the conversation. People are upset and are venting and looking for answers and solutions; telling them that their concerns are meritless or dumb just makes for flame wars rather than conversation.

And that's more than I've posted in years.

Good gaming all.

Mmm. Been a while since I've posted here but I wanted to chime in with my unhappiness over these events. I'll toss a +1, for what it is worth, to what Rysky opened this thread with.

Welp. I don't even like 2E and I bought the book at full market value because of the art and the information inside.

If you feel the price is too much for either the print or the PDF, don't buy them and look at the information provided online. Railing that Paizo is somehow out to get the consumer isn't true nor is it something that is going to fly.

As far as your local gaming store's reaction .. well, without knowing more it appears that you and he were on the same page without much prompting. If you don't like the new system, say so and buy something else. If you are hot about the price then use online sources. If there is something else going on, come forward with that.

As a last note, being a "professional writer" doesn't always give you insight into the publishing world, book printing costs and so on. You seem very excited about the topic but come across as just railing against Paizo in particular for some reason which tends to put the whole argument in a bad light.

Good day and good gaming.

Hunters Moon wrote:

I guess I should have stated this, I am a professional writer. The art REMOVES written content.

If you have to state it, you ain’t it. You are hostile to everyone, forceful with your disagreements, and you appear to completely disrespect artists and their work, which will not endear you to a number of people here in the community. (Many who are artists and produce the content you call filler in Paizo’s product.) Art IS a part of the content and cost, no matter how little you personally value it.

A picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say. I imagine maps are worth even more. Art adds to the value of the book regardless if it is in print or electronic.

This is a very serious issue because your site is being compared to regular 2019 consumer sites and also dndbeyond, and it comes off looking very substandard by comparison. The Paizo site experience right now just confirms to 5e players who are sitting on the fence that 5e is better. People commonly equate site experience with product quality. Irrational sure, but normal human psychology. "The site sucks, so the game probably sucks"

Because the web site doesn't have the latest bells and whistles the game "sucks?"

That sounds more like an excuse not to play rather than some sort of logical comparison of game systems. Perhaps those people aren't interested in Pathfinder in the first place.

Folks that work or used to work in a field are often very opinionated on how things "should work." Watch a movie with a scientist, doctor, lawyer, soldier, pilot, nurse, and so on and they will be sure to point out every flaw and discrepancy from how it should be done or how they would do it.

Go to a restaurant or store with a former or current salesperson or waiter and you'll likely get a rant about how they did it better and how these people don't know what they are doing.

In the end if Paizo is still making sales and are comfortable with how their website works at the moment and it does what they need it to do, that is the important part. I'm sure everyone at every business has a wish list of improvements that they could make if money, work force and time weren't factored in.

As a final note, if being "horrified" about the design layout is reason enough not to buy something I'd have not gone into dozens of brick and mortar stores, including game stores, that often have layouts and shelving practices that make red light districts look classy. Sometimes you have to hold your nose over your notions of what should be and continue the practice to get to what you want.

They do do an announcement about “not being for everyone”, the Player’s Guide lists this AP’s theme as Survival Horror. That’s not for everyone.

As for “springing” this on players you don’t, they learn about their fate at the end of the previous volume.

As for the NPCs those bios aren’t worthless, not everyone plays a mindless murder machine, this volume is about disrupting the Tyrant’s army before you confront him, so you can interact with the NPCs to sow discord at large to do so.

Moreover, it should be taken as a given that not every module or adventure path isn't for everyone. There is always something in one of the paths -- be it robots and spaceships or samurai or pirates or dungeons or politics or Runelords -- that is going to turn someone off. You don't need an announcement or warning for that. It should be taken as a fact going into things.

As far as some of the reviews and commentary I find myself confused. The very first part of the AP starts with you mostly dead and kept alive by the obols. The write up on the obols mentions that they eventually tear up your souls. At no point after reading that did I have the impression that there was a happy ending involved for the players.

This also applies to the Whispering Tyrant. I seem to recall that there was information regarding him being in 2E so it shouldn't be a giant surprise that he survives in some form at the end of the adventure path.

Finally, as I recall there has been information included about the NPCS including bios and the like. They help for the aforementioned interaction that some players might have as well as history and backstory to help fill in a campaign, give ideas for other characters or similar NPCs, and show that there is more to the NPC than a block of stats.

YMMV.

Very nice sculps. I look forward to this set.

It's 2018 and women should be able to wear revealing clothing without being accused of looking like strippers or prostitutes. That's insulting to our collective intelligences. The fact that some here seem to want women to "cover up" smacks of prudishness and religious judgmentalism.

Seoni's outfit is nothing like that of any stripper I've ever seen, and yes, to many, it may be sexy, and is certainly revealing.

However, it is certainly not impractical as, again, a character with access to magic both high and mundane need not "cover up" or conform to the desires or stereotypes of others. As well, Seoni's outfit in the statuette is not indicative of the clothing she would wear in any circumstance, at any time. It's an extremely practical outfit, allowing Seoni comfort, breath-ability, and freedom of movement for effective somatic casting.

Seoni looks great, just the way she is, and doesn't need to change a thing.

I'm not going to wade into the argument about stripperific. It isn't a real word in my opinion anyway. ;)

That said, I would like to comment on the above quoted area. It is 2018 -- nearly 2019 -- and women should be able to wear what they want. However, judgement and opinion is going to come both in real life and in our role playing games.

It is 2018 and female characters don't have to be fully dressed, true, but they also don't have to wear the magical character version of the chain mail bikini either. Seoni's outfit may be comfortable (for a given value of that) and even give ease of movement. I believe, however, that some pants might allow the same degree of somatic spell casting without the draft or expenditure of spells to keep from freezing.

It isn't a practical outfit, IMO, for a travelling adventurer. The bits around the forearms and shins are unnecessary and serve no purpose. Sandals are going to be heck to march over weird terrain in. The long braid and long loincloth bit are going to get caught on every branch and bit of landscape.

I mean, one can like what she is dressed like and it might be good for a town-type adventure but slogging through the woods or swamp or dungeons? I'd hesitate to call it practical.

Again, wearing clothing -- not because of some taboo or religious or prudish prejudice -- is a good idea when people are trying to kill you, when you are going to be in weird environments and so on. It frees up spell slots if nothing else.

Also, the outfit for the figurine must be indicative of the outfit she would wear in any circumstance at any time -- otherwise they wouldn't have put that on her.

PS: This reminds me of arguments people used to have trying to justify why Psylocke of the X-Teams wore that ugly costume. I mean, she's a ninja so why wear pants?

5E has significant market share. As a DM, its hard for me to find PLAYERS who want to play anything except 5E.

Sorry, wanting to turn back the clock to PF1 by rolling back changes will not get folks to move away from 5E.

I have been DMing this playtest for two online groups so far. Both were filled with curious 5E players. They liked it quite a bit. They liked the tactical combat and some of the crunchier bits. The things they didnt like were some of the vestigal PF1 bits (strict vancian casting, touch ac, etc).

Paizo can win here. But it will need to turn to new players and not cater to the PF1 "old guard" that is afraid of change.

By all means, cater to the new players. That said, from what I can tell of the "old guard" the last thing they are afraid of is change.

Now I can only speak for myself, but in 41 years of gaming I changed games and systems quite a bit. I've done my own changes and house rules, I've played systems with other systems bolted on and so on.

These older players aren't afraid of change .. they are afraid of the wrong change, of change for the sake of change, and of change that doesn't actually fix what it is supposed to fix.

It isn't turning back the clock. It's just not rushing forward blindly in the hopes of competing with another company.

@Gorbacz: So I hear. Down here, people are rarely all that excited about either D&D or PF for the most part. If you open a pack of Magic cards, however, you'll be killed by a stampede.

Grognards, or older players if you prefer, isn't all they need. But it isn't wise to alienate an entire percentage -- however small or large -- by basically saying "we don't care about you" and/or "You are all just whining."

Paizo has a pretty decent market share. 5E is the new shiny on the market so of course it go people's attention, and when the newer shiny comes out people will flit over to that as well.

Throwing the product out before it is ready isn't going to win the day and it certainly isn't going to win anyone over.

You don't eat food that isn't done yet. You don't put out a product that isn't complete and expect everyone to love you for it.

As it stands the alignment issues with the paladin are like .. the seventh thing currently wrong with them. I was concerned about the LG issue prior to the play test and now I just cannot bring myself to work up the energy to argue about it.

#notmypaladin

Yeah! Get rid of all those gognards that have been supporting games over the years with money and effort and sweat! Don't listen to them regardless if they are right or wrong!

(This attitude seems so familiar. I just wish I could remember what company acted like that ..)

Just hope that whoever is left after the grognards (for whatever that term means today) are left behind can support the game to levels that it can continue.

knightnday wrote:

They've already said that data security wasn't breached. I'm not sure what transparency that people believe they are entitled to. Stuff broke down. There was a problem and they are working to fix it. It is an inconvenience and that sucks, but outside of that it doesn't appear that people are being unduly affected.

If nothing else, it gives the forums time to cool off.

I don’t believe that I’m entitled to anything. This is a trust issue rather than an entitlement issue. Without a public postmortem on what went wrong, I cannot trust that the issues are well and truly resolved and that appropriate lessons were learned and measures being put into place to help prevent it from happening again. This is unlikely to effect any of my interactions with Paizo yet, but it may drive other people away from the forums to competing services for things like PbP or even purchasing product in general. But, if we get another week of downtime with nary a word besides “trust us”, at that point, I would no longer trust Paizo with their technical platform and will begin cutting ties as a result.

I understand that making a public postmortem is difficult as it requires being more transparent about underlying technology used and/or business processes. It does not require naming any names, and nor should you unless you’re naming people who went above and beyond their duty and deserve some praise and recognition for that. I encourage Paizo to look at postmortems posted by other companies for downtime and severe issues to get a feel for what they’re like and to spend some time drafting one themselves. Here is one such example.

Outside of people really interested in the technical aspects what purpose does a postmortem provide? If you do not trust that when they say the problem is fixed that it is fixed then I doubt a breakdown of what happened is going to provide any additional assurance.

Things break down. Things happen. We don't need a multi-paragraph explanation of what, when, how and why. I'd rather they fix it and prevent it from happening and move on from it rather than explaining "what lessons were learned".

They've already said that data security wasn't breached. I'm not sure what transparency that people believe they are entitled to. Stuff broke down. There was a problem and they are working to fix it. It is an inconvenience and that sucks, but outside of that it doesn't appear that people are being unduly affected.

If nothing else, it gives the forums time to cool off.

Also, I'd like to point out, sometimes things happen. Sometimes hardware goes bad. Sometimes something unexpected happens. They work really hard and they do good work. Maybe don't assume the worst.

Yup. That is life in the age of technology. Heck, it was life before the age of technology as well. Everything will work out. :)

It appears to be pretty much par for the course with the new rules changes. It appears that everything is being changed to fit in with the new paradigm, for better or worse.

Not a fan of all the changes myself. This is just another straw to add to the pile.

Now that that's all settled, let's get back to some mild spoilers.

Marco Massoudi wrote:

Skeld, which Runelords survived how?

** spoiler omitted **

-Skeld

Ok, I almost choked on my drink regarding Karzoug. :)

Maybe all the DNA commercials rubbed off on the play test, hence the term ancestry? I know I hear it a dozen or more times a day on TV.

I agree. Talk about the information and leave each other alone.

My initial knee-jerk reaction is that there is more I dislike than I like. I'm willing to wait and see what, if anything, gets changed in the final product but as of now I'm likely to cherry pick things I like and use them in my own game.

As for the adventure that comes with the play test .. Oh I have so many issues and questions. Not about the tests, necessarily, but a great deal with the overall concept and the issues it could cause. So, so many questions.

eh. Not my cup of tea but it looks interesting nonetheless.

Not really a fan of this idea and what may come from it.

Still not fond of the term "Thievery" but other than that the blog is probably one of the least controversial so far.

It's ok. Nothing overwhelmingly great but nothing that causes too much grief either.

Vrog Skyreaver wrote:

If I had to guess, the reason they're using more verbose terminology is to prevent threads and threads of arguments about how imprecise their language is. It might be a bit harder to get used to, but it should also help make things clearer in the long run, and keep people on the same page.

That is PRECISELY what I am thinking every time I see someone complaining about the use of the keywords and the verbose labeling.

I bet if I were to do a search of forums on some of folks complaining I would find them complaining about imprecise verbiage in PF1. Heaven forbit, Paizo try and tighten up the rules language, and make it much more extensible for a product that has a long life cycle and will be adding many elements as time goes by.

The upside, is that there is a playtest, and, thankfully, there have been posters that have been willing to contribute in a positive way. I hope they continue to do so.

Discussing the language used and the chance that they are over-correcting is a way to contribute positively. Adding verbiage that doesn't help understanding isn't helping with the problem.

so do I just grab my Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to take the magically etched runes off of a weapon? Seems a bit silly.

Also, I see someone has played Earthdawn/Shadowrun

Did we really need orichalcum with all the other magical metals and materials we have?

As for the rest of the blog .. I gotta say, this really isn't very appealing to me at all. I had hopes that I'd see something I like but as of right now this just isn't what I'm looking for.

It really wasn't the Dark Ages to have clerics rather than a proliferation of healing wands. It is just a different way to play.

Something one of my players asked about all this: does resonance go away upon death? Otherwise all that nifty gear one finds on the Bad Guys is useless for 24 hours. I can see that being problematic if one of them happens to be carrying something that could be useful in the next room or nearby in an adventure.

I feel like people here are being overly spiteful or mean, with stuff like focusing on stuff like how blog was written or amount of exclamation points <_<

As I said when I posted about the exclamation points, it is a pet peeve. (That said, if you have a preponderance of exclamation marks I feel like you are hard selling something to me or I am reading a parody, you know? The old !!!111one thing) As for how the blog was written, the major complaint seems to be readability and clarity, which, I suppose could be seen as being mean to the writer. However, if we cannot understand what is being presented how are we to debate about it and ultimately provide helpful feedback?

At least for myself, these comments do not come from a place of spitefulness nor anger/meanness, but a desire to understand what is being presented without needing the devs to come back to the thread to explain what is missing, what is formatted oddly and so on.

We already have enough misunderstandings in these threads without that, you know?

Please... Stop with the "casual tone" when presenting items. Look at that Healing Staff mess...

Next time please just Copy-Paste the full actual Rulebook entry THEN start blabering about its ramifications.

To tie into that .. and I recognize that this may just be a pet peeve here -- but could we have about half as many exclamation marks as we've been getting? It doesn't really read as excitement and just more like my aunt is trying to convince me that a relative's upcoming event is really interesting.

I am definitely not a fan of this system. I'm somewhat confused on how this system is easier for new, or old, players to use as compared to the previous system other than you can use multiple rings, necklaces and so forth. We've just added something different to keep track of.

I am also very much not a fan of terms like "Interact Action" which just sounds awkward to my ears.

Again, not a fan and would probably strip this out of any game I ran unless something comes along in the play test to persuade me otherwise.

I'm not sure I like this very much. I'll have to see much more on it before I finish making up my mind. :/

I'm really kind of sick of the "it's like 4e" comparisons as though this is a complaint. Games are complex beasts with a lot of moving parts and even if you don't like the game as its constituent parts come into a holistic entity, it's not like there were not good ideas which went into that game.

And "everybody gets to do cool stuff no matter what class they pick" is unarguably a good idea.

I want Pathfinder 2nd Edition to borrow, adapt, steal, poach, purloin, etc. every good idea they can find from anywhere, even if it's a similar game that a bunch of people dislike (but a bunch of people like it too.)

I agree with this overall. That said, I'd also like the game to resemble the game I like and prefer as well. I'm hoping that those two goals can meet somewhere in the middle.