After reading Hollows Last Hope and Crown of the Kobold King I noticed that there were no sidebars detailing how to scale the adventure for lower or higher level groups. I always considered these sidebars in Dungeon adventures quite useful. Will they be added in the following GameMastery modules? :)
Another thing that makes me curious: In the advertisement at the end of Hollows Last Hope it states that the GameMastery Modules are "written by fanatsy veterans like Wolfgang Baur, Richard Pett, Nicolas Logue, and Erik Mona". When can we expect a module written by Erik? Checking the upcoming modules I nowhere could find Erik named as an author.
I just ran my players through The Whispering Cairn and we all agreeed that it is a great adventure, so I'd like to see more adventures from you Erik :).
141 thinks that a GameMastery Module written by Erik Mona would be awesome.
69 concurs, or alternatively, 69 suggests that Eric should try his hand at a sword and sorcery novel.
Creative Director
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Scaling the Adventure sidebars won't be appearing in GameMastery adventures OR in Pathfinder. That's one thing that I, personally, am happy to "shed" from the Dungeon years. Those sidebars generally take up too much time and space to justify what is, in many cases, essentially just "Raise or lower the NPCs levels or monster Hit Dice to match your PCs."
Further complicating this problem is the fact that the implied powers of 3rd Edition D&D simply can't be accounted for in a sidebar. For example, a murder mystery adventure might be set for 2nd level characters because the structure of the adventure breaks down once speak with dead is available. Or an adventure where the PCs are trapped in an extraplanar dungeon and have to fight their way through to the portal at the other end is written for 8th level because at 9th, the cleric gains plane shift and can escape easy. And what about scaling adventures for larger than normal sized parties (or smaller ones?). You can't really just make the foes tougher, because that just results in more dead PCs (remember, the PCs themselves aren't tougher, so effects like blasphemy, cloudkill, and other things that affect targets based on Hit Dice become sudden superpowers).
Part of making a D&D adventure work is that, during development (a process that takes days or even weeks), we go through the adventure and make sure that these problems don't exist, making sure not only that the encounters are balanced for the right level, but also that the adventure itself works with that level. The old Scaling the Adventures sidebars rarely had enough room to do what they did anyway, and expanding them to include all of the non-obvious crunch stuff would make them even larger (and thus "rob" more content space).
Scaling the Adventrue sidebars served a better purpose at the start of 3.0 D&D; not only did they work to show readers how easy it is to adjust monsters in the new rules by advancing them or giving them class levels (a concept that, until 3.0, was largely unsupported in the game), but they also helped spread out the usefulness of the adventures in a time where there were very few adventures. Today, there's hundreds, if not thousands, of 3.0 adventures to choose from, so making sure that a 3rd level adventure is easily usable by 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th level characters isn't as important.
Personally, the best place, I think, to go for advice on how to adjust an adventure to a different set of levels are these messageboards. There's countless folks here who are really great at providing suggestions like that, and we at Paizo try to come in an answer questions (like this one) as often as we can. I'm perfectly willing to step in and offer advice for scaling Pathfinder adventures (my advice won't be as helpful on the GameMastery adventures, since I don't work on those).
As for Erik's top-secret GameMastery module... I'll let him answer that one.
Thanks for the explanation James. I suppose I'll stick to the messageboards when I have trouble adjusting the adventures :).
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I designed two rooms in "Seven Swords of Sin" (along with all my evil Paizo compatriots), and wrote an article in the first installment of Pathfinder. I am working on a module in my spare time--I even playtested it at a convention in North Carolina a few months ago--but I don't actually _have_ any spare time right now, which is something of a problem.
I'm also designing a lot of the broad strokes of Paizo's campaign setting beyond Varisia with Jason Bulmahn, and that will definitely see print before my adventure.
At this point I'm going to finish it, and then we're going to put it on the schedule. The other way around won't work, because I am way too busy to hit a set deadline for something like this right now.
That said, "Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk" from WotC comes out in August, and that book contains a lot of my writing (as well as great bits from James Jacobs and Jason Bulmahn).
I will write a novel some day, perhaps even in the relatively near future, but I have several commitments I need to clear out of the way first, including my GameMastery Module.
Thanks for the interest!
--Erik
On the one hand I'm sorry that it will take some time till we see another adventure from you Erik, but on the other hand I'm glad to see how much effort you (and the whole Paizo staff) is putting into Pathfinder :).
Just out of curiosity, what type of module will it be? An E, W, J, D, or U module?
Regrading Castle Greyhawk: What kind of adventure can we expect? Personally I don't like dungeon crawls very much and another super dungeon would not catch my interest. That was one of the reasons I didn't buy Expedition to Undermountain. Expedition to the Demonweb Pits on the other hand was great because it was kind of a planar sightseeing tour.
Thanks for your answers.
Greeting Celeblas.
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Creative Director
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Weird. I did write a reply... a pretty big one... but I'm not seeing it either.
The short version of said reply: Scaling the Adventure sidebars take up too much time and space, and are as they are too short to do the job of scaling properly when it comes to larger parties or in regards to non-crunch implications of power levels interacting with adventure assumptions. Much better to post questions here, where there's a lot of posters ready to read and reply. And sometimes, those replies show up!
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Creative Director
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Regrading Castle Greyhawk: What kind of adventure can we expect? Personally I don't like dungeon crawls very much and another super dungeon would not catch my interest. That was one of the reasons I didn't buy Expedition to Undermountain. Expedition to the Demonweb Pits on the other hand was great because it was kind of a planar sightseeing tour.
Depends what you mean by dungeon crawl.
It IS set, primarilly, in the dungeons under Castle Greyhawk. There's a significant portion of the adventure that takes place in the City of Greyhawk as well, though, and even in the "dungeon crawl" sections, we tried to make the encounters interesting, flavorful, and varied. I suppose the Maure Castle dungeons we've been publishing in Dungeon make for a pretty good comparasion (althoguh the dungeon levels in Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk are individually much smaller than a Maure level, with a few exceptions).
Weird. I did write a reply... a pretty big one... but I'm not seeing it either
That seems to happen sometimes. I usually read the boards via RSS, but sometimes when I go on certain posts are missing.
@DitheringFool
I was replying to James answer:
Scaling the Adventure sidebars won't be appearing in GameMastery adventures OR in Pathfinder. That's one thing that I, personally, am happy to "shed" from the Dungeon years. Those sidebars generally take up too much time and space to justify what is, in many cases, essentially just "Raise or lower the NPCs levels or monster Hit Dice to match your PCs."
Further complicating this problem is the fact that the implied powers of 3rd Edition D&D simply can't be accounted for in a sidebar. For example, a murder mystery adventure might be set for 2nd level characters because the structure of the adventure breaks down once speak with dead is available. Or an adventure where the PCs are trapped in an extraplanar dungeon and have to fight their way through to the portal at the other end is written for 8th level because at 9th, the cleric gains plane shift and can escape easy. And what about scaling adventures for larger than normal sized parties (or smaller ones?). You can't really just make the foes tougher, because that just results in more dead PCs (remember, the PCs themselves aren't tougher, so effects like blasphemy, cloudkill, and other things that affect targets based on Hit Dice become sudden superpowers).
Part of making a D&D adventure work is that, during development (a process that takes days or even weeks), we go through the adventure and make sure that these problems don't exist, making sure not only that the encounters are balanced for the right level, but also that the adventure itself works with that level. The old Scaling the Adventures sidebars rarely had enough room to do what they did anyway, and expanding them to include all of the non-obvious crunch stuff would make them even larger (and thus "rob" more content space).
Scaling the Adventrue sidebars served a better purpose at the start of 3.0 D&D; not only did they work to show readers how easy it is to adjust monsters in the new rules by advancing them or giving them class levels (a concept that, until 3.0, was largely unsupported in the...
I suppose someone failed his spot check ;).
Just out of curiosity, what type of module will it be? An E, W, J, D, or U module?
Last I heard, Erik's module was going to be in the M series - M for "Mona."
I'm not even kidding. :)
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Just out of curiosity, what type of module will it be? An E, W, J, D, or U module?Last I heard, Erik's module was going to be in the M series - M for "Mona."
I'm not even kidding. :)
Any hopes of an "M" for mature? Not like you have the d20 name to worry about since you're going strictly OGL. I'm not even talking about BoEF stuff just villains with a little more gruesome plots or personal motives.
Contributor
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Any hopes of an "M" for mature? Not like you have the d20 name to worry about since you're going strictly OGL. I'm not even talking about BoEF stuff just villains with a little more gruesome plots or personal motives.
We won't rule out doing mature products, but it's not on our list of things to do in the next two years. If we get a sudden demand for such a thing, we might put it on the list, though.
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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The adventure I'm working on is called "The Reguge of Nex," and it would be the first in a series of adventures that isn't locked to one of the current alpha-numeric codes. We've jokingly called it the M series here at work, but for right now I think it should be the V series, for vaporware. :)
Any hopes of an "M" for mature? Not like you have the d20 name to worry about since you're going strictly OGL. I'm not even talking about BoEF stuff just villains with a little more gruesome plots or personal motives.Just out of curiosity, what type of module will it be? An E, W, J, D, or U module?Last I heard, Erik's module was going to be in the M series - M for "Mona."
I'm not even kidding. :)
Coridon, if "Sins of the Saviors" makes it to print anything like the manuscript I just turned in, you'll find plenty of this type of thing in it. I mean, part of it is themed after the seven deadly sins.
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Director of Games
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The adventure I'm working on is called "The Reguge of Nex," and it would be the first in a series of adventures that isn't locked to one of the current alpha-numeric codes. We've jokingly called it the M series here at work, but for right now I think it should be the V series, for vaporware. :)
I think Erik meant "The Refuge of Nex."
Jason Bulmahn
Just helping out here..
The adventure I'm working on is called "The Reguge of Nex," and it would be the first in a series of adventures that isn't locked to one of the current alpha-numeric codes. We've jokingly called it the M series here at work, but for right now I think it should be the V series, for vaporware. :)
I think Erik meant "The Refuge of Nex."
Jason Bulmahn
Just helping out here..
And that's why he is paid to be an editor. ;)
That's why JASON is paid to be an editor ("managing" at that). Erik is paid to be a Publisher. ;-)
That's why JASON is paid to be an editor ("managing" at that). Erik is paid to be a Publisher. ;-)
That's what I meant. Hey are you being paid to edit too? ;)
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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Ug. Yeah, it's called "The Refuge of Nex," and I've been describing it as Castle Greyhawk meets Lost. Basically, the PCs become trapped in an extra-dimensional dungeon with connections to a handful of demiplanes and must find a way to survive within the unique dungeon ecology, find out what the hell is going on, and get out of dodge.
The playtest I ran worked wonderfully, but the main problem I have right now is finding the time to write it.
The second problem I have is mixing up the F and the G on my keyboard, apparently. :)
--Erik
Castle Greyhawk meets Lost
Will a certain mountain of gold be making an appearance?
Or a little man named Geb?
Ug. Yeah, it's called "The Refuge of Nex," and I've been describing it as Castle Greyhawk meets Lost. Basically, the PCs become trapped in an extra-dimensional dungeon with connections to a handful of demiplanes and must find a way to survive within the unique dungeon ecology, find out what the hell is going on, and get out of dodge.
The playtest I ran worked wonderfully, but the main problem I have right now is finding the time to write it.
The second problem I have is mixing up the F and the G on my keyboard, apparently. :)
--Erik
I just assumed you meant "The Rogue of Nex". Either way, it will be great to see more of your work.
That's why JASON is paid to be an editor ("managing" at that). Erik is paid to be a Publisher. ;-)That's what I meant. Hey are you being paid to edit too? ;)
No, you're right. We have enough with one "editing" thread out here. We'd better be careful or we'll drop the balls...