Adventure authors and cameos

[exile]

Who is writing the Pathfinder Society scenarios? Is there an open call or guidleines for new scenarios? For those who have already authored scenarios were any of the NPCs in them (I'm thinking Grandmaster Torch or Skelg the Ripper in particular) old PCs or NPCs used previously in home games? Just curious

[Craig Shackleton]

I was asked to write Frozen Fingers because of previous work I had done for Paizo and Sinister Adventures. I gather that they hope to eventually open them up to new freelancers but initially they are working with established authors. Partly because they have tight turnover times I suspect.

Skelg the Ripper was part of the initial outline I was given to work with. If he is a cameo from something else, he's not mine.

However...

Spoiler:

Haldyr Bjornsson is named sort of after a real guy in my game group (although I modified his name significantly), who has a son named Ben. Thus Bengeirr Haldyrsson. All of the other names are simply names I hoped were culturally appropriate. Natalya Yagevna was my attempt to turn the Russian style Patronymic into a Matronymic meaning "Natalya, Daughter of Yaga."

[exile]

Very cool... Thanks for the reply. I liked your adventure a lot.

Spoiler:

I must admit though that Natalya was something of an enigma to me. Was she controlling the undead on the ship? I thought sure we were going to hand Skelg over to her and watch her eat (literally) his heart or something.

Chad

[Craig Shackleton]

Please use spoiler tags when discussing content. I don't want to give away too many secrets to future players. Thanks!

To answer your question though:

Spoiler:

Natlaya did not exactly control the undead, but they wouldn't hurt her, and she could make them row by beating the drum. But Natalya was intended to be a bit of an enigma too, so I won't say much more. As in, I have her well thought out, and if I get the chance, I may use her again in a future adventure.

And I'm glad you enjoyed the adventure!

The Rambling Scribe

[exile]

Sorry about that Craig. Fixed it with Spoiler tags...a first for me; I am so tech impaired.

Chad

[Craig Shackleton]

exile wrote:

Sorry about that Craig. Fixed it with Spoiler tags...a first for me; I am so tech impaired.

Chad

No worries, and thanks! It took me a while to figure out all the tags on the boards.

EDIT: I sometimes think I should use a more smiley avatar; i hope I don't come across as grumpy as Roy!

[exile]

Nope, no grumplepuss-ness (that's a noun-adjective that my wife and I frequently apply to our cats) detected.

Chad

[Baydenostasich]

Craig Shackleton wrote:

Please use spoiler tags when discussing content. I don't want to give away too many secrets to future players. Thanks!

To answer your question though:** spoiler omitted **

And I'm glad you enjoyed the adventure!

The Rambling Scribe

Cool adventure by the way...unfortunately...

Spoiler:

A 25 diplomacy check and returning her lost item was not enough to keep her from attacking our party and killing two of us.

[deathboy]

Craig Shackleton wrote:

I was asked to write Frozen Fingers because of previous work I had done for Paizo and Sinister Adventures. I gather that they hope to eventually open them up to new freelancers but initially they are working with established authors. Partly because they have tight turnover times I suspect.

Skelg the Ripper was part of the initial outline I was given to work with. If he is a cameo from something else, he's not mine.

However...** spoiler omitted **

Craig, Frozen Fingers was great. So no worries there. Both my wife, who was the one who changed an encounter, and myself had a grand time.

As for your naming worries, you actually got it pretty spot on. A source book I tend to lean on a lot is Gary Gygax's 'Extraordinary Book of Names'. This book has gotten me out of jams in all my RPG games.

Will

[Craig Shackleton]

Baydenostasich wrote:

Cool adventure by the way...unfortunately...

** spoiler omitted **

I'm glad that you enjoyed the adventure, and I'm sorry you got killed, especially if it was in a way that was unsatisfactory to you.

Unfortunately, I don't have any power over that, and I wasn't there so I couldn't really intervene. I've seen some of your posts about it here, and it doesn't sound like what I intended, but I also had a DM (presumably yours) tell me a similar story which I can only partly remember and at the time it sounded reasonable. Don't take this as me taking sides at all, I'm just demonstrating that it's hard for me to do that.

I do know that as with anything, there were some unusual interpretations of more than one of the adventure, some of which got clarified at the con, some of which didn't. Some of them had an impact on the PCs or even worse (IMO) in the stories' internal logic.

Here's what I'll offer though. Next year at Gen Con, if you play a PFS adventure in a slot I'm running, talk to me and I'll reserve you a seat at my table. I don't know if I'll be writing any of the Gen Con adventures, but I plan to be there running slots regardless.

The Rambling Scribe

[Craig Shackleton]

deathboy wrote:

Craig, Frozen Fingers was great. So no worries there. Both my wife, who was the one who changed an encounter, and myself had a grand time.

As for your naming worries, you actually got it pretty spot on. A source book I tend to lean on a lot is Gary Gygax's 'Extraordinary Book of Names'. This book has gotten me out of jams in all my RPG games.

Will

Thanks for your kind words Will!

[Sythaeryn]

Baydenostasich wrote:

Craig Shackleton wrote:

Please use spoiler tags when discussing content. I don't want to give away too many secrets to future players. Thanks!

To answer your question though:** spoiler omitted **

And I'm glad you enjoyed the adventure!

The Rambling Scribe

Cool adventure by the way...unfortunately...

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:

Wow, she attacked you? Our group did well with Natalya. She never attacked us, we were able to get her everything she wanted and we left on good terms with her. Was there some other reason for her aggression?

I loved Frozen Fingers, definitely my favorite scenario. I liked it because there were diplomatic ways to get through the adventure and the ending was not the normal kill the big-bad. The bumbling antics of our Taldan rogue and the chastising the Taldan priest gave him for it had me laughing out loud several times as well.

[MatthewJHanson]

exile wrote:

Is there an open call or guidleines for new scenarios?

According to the Writing for Pathfinder seminar at Gencon, there will be a an open call some time later this year.

[Baydenostasich]

Sythaeryn wrote:

Spoiler:

Upon meeting her, my character went immediately into diplomatic mode, making several over 20 rolls and presenting her with the item we'd recovered. Another character helped with a 20 something. One of the characters (doing some cool RP, so it's not his fault) attempted to help and rolled a 1 on a diplomacy check. Apparently the DM felt this was enough to drop her to hostile and she surprise attacked my character when the two of us were alone. The others tried to save me, but another was killed and several dropped unconscious. Only the event time slot ending saved 1-2 of them I think.

Overall the DM did a great job with the adventure, though I think he made the end more harsh than was intended.