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The writing is compelling, definitely one of the strong points of Pathfinder. It is always a pleasure to read the adventures. Still the language has a possible downside. The vocabulary used in Pathfinder is of a certain standard and sometimes quite difficult. This limits the number of potential non-native speaker customers to a rather small group, which might be considered a pity. But then again, the quality of the writing makes reading pathfinder somewhat of a literary experience.
Well, I'm from germany and I don't have any problems to understand the writing in PF or in any other Paizo product.
And I don't even consider my knowledge of the english language to be above average.Sure, the writing is better than in the average RPG book, but it is not that difficult to understand (at least not for me).
Sometimes I have to look up certain terms and I find this to be cool, because it teaches me the language in a very pleasing way. When I'm too lazy to look up an unknown word, I can mostly figure out its meaning within the context of the article.
I think that PF can attract as many foreign readers as the magazines did and I wouldn't want to see any changes to the language, even if it would make it easier for me to understand.
I'm very pleased with everything I've seen so far in Pathfinder.
The things I'd like to see changed are really minor.
As many of the previous posters already said, I wouldn't mind if you'd cut back on the bestiary.
I really like the bestiary as a feature, but three really well done monsters would be enough for me.
The free space should be devoted to more background information.
I really like SKR's deity write-ups, but these should be featured more frequently as these are really important aspects in a new campaign world.
The Pathfinder journal is something I'm looking forward to every month. This is a really nice tool to show the vibe of the setting, to show what makes it unique and cool. Please don't drop it.
It is a really good idea to let the characters find these and give them to the players. I'll certainly do so in the future.
I second the request for stuff aimed at the players. I can understand that PF is mostly for GMs, but this statement doesn't solve the issue.
My players would like to see more setting-specific PrCs, base classes, feats, gear and so on...
And I'd like to see a Pathfinder class or PrC too!
I understand the notion to prefer fluffy stuff above crunch because of 4E, but I doubt that this will pay out.
If people playing 4E turn to 3.5 issues of PF for fluff and the 3.5 adventure in it doesn't turn them away,, a PrC here or some feats there won't either, imho.
All in all, keep up the great work!
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I really am very pleased with everything in Pathfinder so far. The only thing I would change would be the Pathfinder Journal. It really does not do much for me in its current form.
A few ideas for additions I think would be cool are having tear out or poster: player handouts, battle maps of key locations, and/or maps town or country maps of key regions.
Another thing I am slightly concerned about is how much of the information in the back halves of Pathfinder will be repeated in the PF Chronicles products. I see the necessity for some repeated information, but I hope that it is greatly expanded on.
Keep up the good work,
James May
You know what might be interesting, what if instead of the Pathfinder's Journal, they instead put a short adventure not connected directly to the adventure path that introduced all of the same flavor that the Pathfinder's Journal does, but gives a DM additional material. I mean, wouldn't it be more fun to be a player running through a chase in Korvosa, after some thieves than merely reading about it? But perhaps that would step on the game modules too much.
Dude! That is an AWESOME idea! Second it. Game fiction leaves me cold, but side-treks are another matter entirely.
First off... this is a great thread! Keep the comments and suggestions coming!
To be honest, I was pretty much disappointed with Burnt Offerings on all points. It sounds like most of the voices here were happy with it and I was willing to just declare it "not for me", but since you asked...
Mind you, I've only read Burnt Offerings, so I can't judge the series as a whole. But for that one book, here's where it fell short for me:
1) A real lack of player-usable material. Fortunately there was the well-put-together Players Guide that y'all offered for free so the players aren't completely left out, but there was a real shortage of material in the main book that I could hand to my players. Having just come from the brilliant 'Savage Tiding' series of articles for Savage Tide, I was expecting more player-friendly content to help immerse my players in the game. Since that left me afeared that later books in the series would also lack player-content, I couldn't rely on the Players Guide exclusively.
2) I didn't like the majority of the art. I don't have names to attach to the individual pieces, but too much of the art was done as grotesque characitures and NOT the kind of stuff that I'd use to show my players what the person or monster actually looked like.
3) I didn't like the promise of a "collectible" campaign setting. While I admire the idea of expanding the setting only as adventures introduced different aspects, Golarion is obviously an already planned out setting that you're just feeding us piece by piece. Players of clerics have to fend for themselves if their character worships any god other than the one presented in the current series, elves and gnomes have secret backgrounds unknowable to players of elves or gnomes, etc.
4) The campaign isn't nearly as generic as I'd hoped from the first announcement. Rise of the Runelords depends on a setting where a now-fallen kingdom once enslaved giants, fer instance. It's too set in its own history and geography to be easily dropped into Greyhawk, Eberron or home brew setting.
5) I didn't like Sandpoint. Like, at all. It's funny that it's based on a real town because everything in it just seemed so contrived. At the same time, I had trouble seeing how any of the residents detailed in it could be used in a game session. Compare to the truly inspired Diamond Lake for the Age of Worms AP. There, even the act of shopping for a new weapon leads to an interesting session as the smith presents strange magical or mysterious items to sell. The best I get in Sandpoint is an opportunity to drink yucky tank water...
So what did I like? I liked the way the writers re-examined some of the tired tropes of D&D and re-presented them in fresh ways. The goblins were obviously the real break-out here, but even the use of the 'rats in my cellar' was a fun and new.
Anyhoo, I hope this was constructive enough. I suspect I'm in the minority in my disappointment with Burnt Offerings, so I won't expect you to change anything to satisfy me. But for what it's worth, that's what kept me from buying Pts 2-6.
(I should mention, though, that I was very close to buying 'Hook Mountain'. It sounded fairly stand-alone and I was interested in rules for running a keep. Add in another re-envisioning of a standard D&D monster (the ogre) and a tour of the more amazing architecture of Varisia and I was sold. When I learned those keep rules didn't make it after all, my interest level dipped.)
The writing is compelling, definitely one of the strong points of Pathfinder. It is always a pleasure to read the adventures. Still the language has a possible downside. The vocabulary used in Pathfinder is of a certain standard and sometimes quite difficult. This limits the number of potential non-native speaker customers to a rather small group, which might be considered a pity. But then again, the quality of the writing makes reading pathfinder somewhat of a literary experience.
I second absinth in his reply to the above quote.
As i am also a non-native english speaker/reader.I don't believe the language is to hard or to litery.
It is just written with a lot of style and flavour.
Pathfinder #1 and #2 were really splendid in my opinion.
I did especially like the AP the write ups about the different cities and the article 'bout Desna.
Pathfinder #3 was a bit less in my ppoint of vieuw, but enopugh has been said about that.
to be honoust i have not read the adventure in PF #4 but i can say i loved the articles bout the dragons and the giants.
They added some nice fluff, Well done.
Further more i do love the pathfinder's journal, for the nice background info and adventure ideas.
One thing that can be changed is the bestiary. It doesn't have to disapear but it would be nice if the original written monsters stay.
Some variant monsters or to hastily scibbled critters can be ditched IMO
thats all folks
Keep up the good work
Personally, when I first saw that a magazine was going to cost $20 a month, I almost gagged. That was outrageous. Even with the subscription discount it was double the cost of an issue of Dungeon.
But, after receiving PF 1, I see where the money is going. The production design is excellent. The artwork is superb. And I'm really intrigued by this new game world. I especially love Sandpoint. It has that sleepy, suburban home-town feel to it.
I didn't think I would maintain my subscription passed the first few issues, but I sure will now.
DogBone
P.S. Everyone is right though...PF 4 wasn't the greatest.
4) The campaign isn't nearly as generic as I'd hoped from the first announcement. Rise of the Runelords depends on a setting where a now-fallen kingdom once enslaved giants, fer instance. It's too set in its own history and...
I just treated the descriptions of the Runelord civilization as mythic hyperbole; devices used by storytellers to highlight that the Runelords were powerful, but not to be taken literally...
As far as my opinion of Pathfinder, it's reverse from how I felt about Dungeon and Dragon. I couldn't wait to read Dungeon from cover to cover. Dragon, I read that one article that interested me immediately, then approached the rest as the whim took me. With Pathfinder, I read the articles immediately, read the adventure portion when the mood strikes me and indifferently skim the monster section. This is only because I'm more focused on converting Varisia into my game world than running the campaign at this time.
In that regard, I'd like to see more space dedicated to fleshing out the locales and history of Varisia. My conversion work would be so much easier if I had enough information on the region to find substitutes or integrate the material. Without adding pages and raising the price of the book, I would argue for a slimming down of the monster section or making the section a feature that appears intermittently.
Overall, I highly enjoy the series and love finding each issue in my mailbox each month. I have no complaints or criticisms regarding the articles. I felt the adventure portions of #1 and #2 were excellent. HMM, however, was very a very poor offering (being piecemeal, indecisive and juvenile); one that I will eventually cherry-pick and rewrite before I run it. FotSG was a decent, workmanlike adventure — it gets the job done, but was otherwise unremarkable. Of the campaign so far, I would have liked to have seen stronger themes and symbolisms of avarice/vice run through each adventure, but that's only a minor criticism...
As I said in my previous post, I am a massive fan of what you have accomplished with Pathfinder, keep up the good work.
The one thing I would like to see added is more foreshadowing. I don't mean of the BBEG, I think there are enough hints about The Runelords of Sin in the current AP. I would like to see more like Aldern in #1. Little hints and encounters that the player look back on a few levels / adventures later and see it makes sense.
As it is, each adventure seems really disconnected with the rest, they are too self contained, so much so that I am sure most players could tell you exactly where each volume started and finished. I get that Pathfinder is also designed for each issue to stand alone, but a little more foreshadowing wouldn't hurt this at all. And for those who play it through continuously, it would provide great cohesion to the entire AP.
The way it stands at the moment, the PCs in #3 end up at Fort Rannick and meet the Black Arrows and it all just comes out of the blue. It just seems like the various authors of each individual adventure have completed their assignment in complete isolation form the rest of the AP, and then just jammed them together at the end with no thought to foreshadowing / integrating.
Looking back over all the APs from dungeon, none of them are really that good on foreshadowing those intermediate encounters. There are very few "easter eggs" in early adventures for the observant player.
Regarding the Bestiary
Generally speaking, I like the approach and hope that you continue in this vein. The creative approach to old monsters with the addition of new is great. The addition of the ecology and such offer plenty of hooks.
What I would like to see is perhaps some specific adventure hooks that pertain to the PF adventure they are present in. Perhaps a paragraph a piece. There is already some of this present, but I would like to see a bit more prominence. If I need a side trek on the fly, I would like to be able to look in the Bestiary and just lift one into gameplay.
Best.
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As I said in my previous post, I am a massive fan of what you have accomplished with Pathfinder, keep up the good work.
The one thing I would like to see added is more foreshadowing. I don't mean of the BBEG, I think there are enough hints about The Runelords of Sin in the current AP. I would like to see more like Aldern in #1. Little hints and encounters that the player look back on a few levels / adventures later and see it makes sense.
As it is, each adventure seems really disconnected with the rest, they are too self contained, so much so that I am sure most players could tell you exactly where each volume started and finished. I get that Pathfinder is also designed for each issue to stand alone, but a little more foreshadowing wouldn't hurt this at all.
The real problem with this is the fact that each of the adventures are written by a different person, so.. until they get a adventure back from one author, they can't really tell another author to try to include X character - because they have already been working on their own adventure for a month or so and have it planned... with aldern it was easy - one meeting had to be added to PF1 and it was James Writing the adventure anyway
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2. I agree with other posters that more player friendly info is needed in the monthlies. As a very experienced player, I can roll with it, but it is hard to bring a newbie into this campaign world when so much is unanswered. The players guide is good, but could have been 2x as long.
And not only newbies. My players are experienced Living Arcanis players, and are used to quite deep character background and options. Initially, I found it extremely difficult to convince them into giving Pathfinder a go, when all that was available was the RotRL Players Guide. Where were the campaign specific racial options? What prestige classes could they aim for? What intrigues existed between different factions?
Eventually, I sold them by a) introducing Raptorans (winged Elves from Races of the Wild) for something unique; b) revealing the Desna article (PDF format is fantastic for this!); c) teasing that Gnomes are descended from the Fey (of which no further information has become available); d) begging them to trust me on the quality of the product.
Now that we have commenced playing Burnt Offerings, the players are universally glad they jumped on board - they're really getting into unravelling the various Sandpoint intrigues, and really getting into character.
What would really have helped was more player information on the various Shoanti tribes (players were interested, but avoided Shoanti, due to lack of information) and just what makes Golarion Gnomes so different?
I realise that the Pathfinder tree has to grow from a single acorn, and as a GM, I'm happy to see the Chronicles products on the horizon. But it has been difficult for players who's expectations have been spoiled by rich campaign-specific character options available in other settings.
3. The monsters have been more miss than hit for me. I prefer a monsters with a deep and significant connection to the setting. While Hounds of Tindalos are nice for nostalgia, what the heck are they doing in Golarion? The Shining Child was a missed opportunity, in my opinion, because the author chose to describe it from the perspective of imperfect knowledge rather than relating it directly to the setting. The goblins, taiga giants, runeslaves, and (to a lesser extent) ogrekin were much better in my opinion.
JSL certainly has a point here. If a monster adds to the adventure, it should be in the bestiary. The sinspawn is a perfect example. But there is no need to make up monsters just because you want to fill a bestiary of 10 or 12 pages in each issue.
I'd say that the old approach in Dungeon was a perfect modus operandi. There we only got new monster descriptions and statistics when necessary for the story. Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with less or occasionally even no monsters in certain issues. Just write what the story requires, if that's seven monsters, then by all means, give us seven monsters. If it's one, then I only want one, not seven. Make the format fit the adventure, not the other way around.
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The Lyrakien was excellent. Close ties with Desna. I'm definitely going to build an encounter featuring this creature during some cross-country travelling between adventures. I'd almost like to see a Savage-Species style PC racial class write up of this friendly little fellow. I think he could appeal to some gamer types, similar to the Faen Sprytes of Arcana Evolved.