najas latep's page

New Shadowlands Website:

"The Shadowlands is an intentional blend of fantasy and science fiction. It is a post-apocalyptic world so advanced that it appears magical. Part of the realism of the Shadowlands is to re-imagine a world where the possibilities of fantasy are in fact possible, a remembrance of futures past, and to provide a narrative way for players to engage that. Accordingly, it takes inspiration from a number of different sources. The far-future stories of Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, A Canticle for Leibowitz and the Culture series of Iain M. Banks provide the science fiction foundations of our setting, just as heady films like Inception, Cloud Atlas, and Equilibrium paint images of what it’s like to exist in a world where magic and psionics are fundamental and also controlled!

Finally, the classic Dungeons & Dragons settings of old like Planescape, Ravenloft and the original Dark Sun give a sense of the ways that beliefs, ideologies, motivations, and factional affiliation can affect and encourage great roleplaying!"

Colin's contribution sounds awesome, hoping they can achieve that at least!

Latest Torment Update (14): 2 Days Left! A Second Screenshot.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/ 444758

Chris Avellone joins, New Add-ons, Sagus Cliffs Screenshot, Tony Evans describes our vision for combat (video), our Vision Document.

Video on Combat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CbytIl79s5U

Visions Document:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxMevjNSr2EjRXBlY0l1RmpuaWM/view?sle=true

Good stuff. Excited for this project, especially after going through their updates.

Glad they clarified that the current screenshot + animation is a draft and not the final in game visual.

It looked cool enough but will be great with some polish and some programming for lighting/shadows.

First Issue of our Planescape fanzine is launched!

Just follow the link here, and definitely feel free to share and seed across varied filesharing platforms (will help us with bandwidth!)

Articles this time around:

Killing the Lady of Pain: Part 1
Log X: Adventuring on the Prime
Kobolds in Sigil
Planar Locations: Surcease and Dolor
Interview with Book of the Damned III author Todd Stewart

passing this along for Justin, the guy who taped it:

"Some of you may have heard about the author D&D game that took place at Epic ConFusion last month. Basically, Myke Cole and Peter Brett got in their heads to organize a game with a who's who of big name authors that were attending the con. It ended up with Joe Abercrombie, Elizabeth Bear, Peter Brett, Jim Hines, Jay Lake, Scott Lynch, Patrick Rothfuss, and Brent Weeks playing with the debut authors Myke Cole and Saladin Ahmed DMing.

I was lucky enough to be invited in to film it. Most of the film (3 hours worth) is still being edited, but I had enough left over to put together a fun little trailer of the event. Some good laughs - enjoy.

Link

Also, Brent Weeks did a full write up of the game over at Aidan Moher's blog A Dribble of Ink:

Link
"

WHY IS IT NOT TOMORROW ALREADY?!

Planewalker Quarterly Zine

We're creating a new, free quarterly fanzine for planar aficionados and we want you to help us! Our goal is to bring together fans of planar adventuring and promote the aspects of Planescape we fell in love with as well as provide support for those playing in Pathfinder's Great Beyond, 4e's cosmos, or other cosmologies including their own homebrewed Mulitverses.

The magic is happening here:

http://www.planewalker.com/forums/planewalker-projects/quarterly-fanzine

We're looking for creative types to help us with art and articles. Article ideas include locations, NPCs, classes and prestige classes, monsters, new planes / prime worlds / cosmologies, reviews, interviews, and GM and player advice. If you have other ideas for fluff and crunch (open to multiple systems including PF), definitely come over and suggest them!

Looking forward to seeing you,

Sciborg2

>Wait, I do seem to remember Mark Millar mentioning that his editor >reigned him in with some of the stuff he wanted to do in Wanted, and in >retrospect he thought the changes were a good idea, because he'd have >nowhere to go if he started out with what he wanted to do.

He was reigned in? Wow, that only makes it sadder nerd-rage/rape-fantasy trash.

I do agree that GM is probably not too easy to work with, but New X-men comes out of left field with the Xorn as Magneto stuff that it really kills the whole storyline. There's also the Chinatown issue where Xorn writes in his diary, done by an artist GM - from what I heard - had to pull in for that special issue.

<<I haven't read this comic, but my sense is that Morrison doesn't think much of super-heroes, and there's a sense that he thinks he's slumming when he's writing for them. I loved the first half of his run on New X-Men, but it's clear he was making it up as he went along and the whole thing smashed like a trainwreck at the end.>>

Morrison doesn't like superheroes? Erik Mona, have you read his JLA run, the best JLA run ever that single handedly made that comic viable again?

As for Final Crisis and Batman RIP, they may be flawed storyteller experiments but I'd rather have something different than rape-based fan-fiction like Identity Crisis. These are some the best stories out right now, warts and all.

Finally, New X-men is the only reason we had Astonishing or the latest Messiah story lines. As for the mess at the end, what I've been told by insiders is that a lot of that was editorial. Enough so that at the next Comic-Con GM surprised Joe Q by sitting at the DC panel. Apparently Joe Q was screaming at him "You owe me!" at the time...

sorry, i should have said most people i know....(can't edit for some reason).

you guys likely have a better sense of your customer base and no insult was meant....

I understand this idea, but honestly most people don't want updates or even links for free content before they are sold on PFRPG.

I don't know if this already exists (or will exist), but it would be nice if the Beta had examples of converting from 3.5 to Pathfinder. Monsters, PCS and NPCS, etc...

Maybe online, as I know you guys are really busy.

Thanks,

Najas

i think this makes sense - do you think pregenerated characters would be a good idea Robert?

Cool. thanks.

Sajan Patel, that is a very astute observation.

now that you made me read my name fowards i'll have to return to the 5th dimension!

you know what's crazy? i have a twin sister just like the iconic! though her name isn't Sajni...which would be kinda weird if both our names meant lover...

curious if we'll see more runelords and more of their history in the future. i liked how the sins - mortal evil that can be rationalized - are empowered by runes based on aboleth magic - irrational cosmic evil.

It makes me wonder if anytime we try to rationalize extreme evil we are trying to paint a veneer over that cosmic darkness...excellent work!

i didn't mean not personalize the products you pay for, just the alpha and beta for pfrpg is all.

damn double post

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/the-miscast-spe.html

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/the-miscast-spe.html

something James Jacobs said on the "Why would you worship Asmo" thread tied into something I've been thinking about, namely:

how does magic change or even redefine progress? Golarion has many real world parallels which makes it even more interesting to consider how history can be revised due to magic.

one thing i've wondered about is if magic is real would the internet be invented a lot earlier? after all, we needed a lot of technology to move information around but magic sidesteps electricity, information theory, and varied engineering problems i don't know enough about...

Maybe I'm doing this wrong, but my understanding is that everytime there is an update to the alpha we have to "add to cart" and then "personalize" it.

I feel like it would garner more public participation if one could just download the document directly. Or am I missing something and that is possible?

thanks,

Najas

I think the idea that the god matches the alignment of the worshiper to a somewhat modern conception at times. Many old scriptures think of gods as elemental forces that must be bargained with or even that we are shackled to certain gods even though others exist.

Like the OP said of Hextor, Asmo is the god of contracts and this makes him a god inherent to civilization. There are many things we accept as "necessary" evils, justified by political or economic theory. For the sake of not derailing this thread I won't provide examples, surely you have them in mind.

The average person might see contracts, like hurricanes, part of the world he can't control. As such, he then seeks succor from a god who might be able to do him a favor within that sphere of influence. In Cheliax, where I suspect contracts end up being a big part of life (as they are in our modern world) those with little means might feel there is little choice. Or more importantly, the choice is between Asmodeus and a god who can't help them deal with the problem at hand.

This brings up the question of yes Asmo is evil but is his existence natural/necessary in a modern Golarian civilization?

Pathfinder's 9 alignment Outer Planes. The number of plot hooks in the Gazeteer along with the wide variety of races and cultures that are draw on RL without being clones. The Runelords and the idea of sin magic - I spent hours thinking about what each sin really meant, not to mention trying to fit illusion with pride in my mind.

That the depth of the game's thoughtful aspects are kept are what I loved about the pre-4E material and keeping the deeper elements of the game intact makes Pathfinder the real D&D imo.

i was wondering what information about Pathfinder's planar cosmos has been released. also, how much will be covered in the CS coming in August?

thanks,

najas

loved the backgrounds.

I loved the rakshasa articles, specifically the inversion of reincarnation from being a cycle to be escaped into the key to eternal decadence.