If you were to do gastronomic tourism in Golarion, which place's gastronomy you would be more interested in tasting?
Humbly,
Yawar
What's the best dish you have tasted while traveling?
Humbly,
Yawar
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If you were to do gastronomic tourism in Golarion, which place's gastronomy you would be more interested in tasting?
Humbly,
Yawar
Western Varisia, Jalmeray, and Minkai are all pretty tied there. In part because that's where my real-world preferences live.
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What's the best dish you have tasted while traveling?
Humbly,
Yawar
I haven't done much traveling at all. In fact, with the exception of going to Gen-Con for Paizo several times, I've never left the west coast of the USA, so I'm not sure any of that counts as "traveling" for your purposes.
I do want to some day visit places like Japan or Scotland or even Canada, but at this point I'm not sure that'll ever happen.
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Well I hope you get chance one day. I think traveling somewhere is very eye opening experience compared to just hearing about place.
Anyhoo, I wanted to sprites and Gathlains. Like do you think Gathlains would be sprite heritage in 2e or if they are different enough to be their own ancestry?
Gathlains would be their own thing.
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Thanks for answering my previous game questions, James. Really appreciate it.
So, with that out of the way, what do you think of the theory that the Godzilla in Godzilla vs Kong is just MechaGodzilla wearing a Godzilla creature as a giant meat-suit?
I'm positive that's the plot, and have felt that way within a few minutes of seeing the first trailer for the movie.
Hm. Is it okay then if Godzilla/MechaGodzilla loses to King Kong in the end?
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Hm. Is it okay then if Godzilla/MechaGodzilla loses to King Kong in the end?
I suspect that Kong's gonna die in this one. The tagline says "One will fall" after all... and falling is how Kong dies in most movies. My prediction is that Kong will manage to expose the truth of Mechagodzilla only to have to flee, and then he and Godzilla will need to team up to defeat Mechagodzilla, and in that last fight Kong will fall.
As long as Godzilla survives! He's died plenty of times before in movies, of course, but he's one of my favorites of anything anywhere, so I've got vested interest in seeing him continue to be in movies.
Have you played or read the RPG Unknown Armies and if so, any thoughts on it? The tagline really hooked me: "An occult game about broken people conspiring to fix the world."
Has your gaming experience ever dealt with the fallout of a Polymorph plot point? I'm looking forward to seeing how you guys implement Polymorph Any Object in 2e and I thought it would be fun to hear any stories about the sub-school's potential for shenanigans from one of the devs.
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Has your gaming experience ever dealt with the fallout of a Polymorph plot point? I'm looking forward to seeing how you guys implement Polymorph Any Object in 2e and I thought it would be fun to hear any stories about the sub-school's potential for shenanigans from one of the devs.
Yup. There was a troll polymorphed into a cow in one game I ran that ended up being a "forever cow" in a tavern because you could cut steaks from it forever.
LOL!
Went on a deep dive into his lore (I'm assuming Doresain is a WotC copyright?) and the ties between him and the Leng Ghouls is one of those 'god I wish I knew the truth' mysteries of Pathfinder.
Is Kabriri himself undead or a former mortal-turned-demon who propogated undead? On that note, CAN a divinity like a demon lord or such become undead in that way? Would it be possible for, for example, Zura to turn one of the Malebranche perhaps into a vampire or does their spark of divine power make them beyond such afflictions?
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Went on a deep dive into his lore (I'm assuming Doresain is a WotC copyright?) and the ties between him and the Leng Ghouls is one of those 'god I wish I knew the truth' mysteries of Pathfinder.
Is Kabriri himself undead or a former mortal-turned-demon who propogated undead? On that note, CAN a divinity like a demon lord or such become undead in that way? Would it be possible for, for example, Zura to turn one of the Malebranche perhaps into a vampire or does their spark of divine power make them beyond such afflictions?
As far as I know, Doresain is a WotC thing invented by Wolfgang Baur in an older Dungeon magazine adventure. I haven't done much with him at all.
The Leng ghoul, and in truth ghouls and ghasts as they mostly exist in D&D, is largely inspired from Lovecraft's writings, particularly things like "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" and to a lesser extent stories like "Pickman's Model" and "The Hound." Certainly, the thematic tie between ghouls and ghasts is fully from Lovecraft, since he has those specific dynamics present in "Dream Quest." A big part of the inspiration also comes from the writings of Clark Ashton Smith, and since he and Lovecraft were corespondents and friends there was a lot of idea cross-pollination there.
So I suspect that the inspiration I took for developing ghouls and Leng Ghouls in Pathfinder likely served as the same inspiration for whoever designed Doresain. It certainly was a primary inspiration for Gygax himself if you go back far enough. But CERTAINLY I know that Wolfgang has the same sort of ghoul inspirations I do as regards Lovecraft and Smith and the old pulps.
Kabriri started out as an elf, then became the first ghoul. That's my bit of attempt in lore to explain why elves can't become paralyzed by ghouls.
Demon lords and gods can become undead, yes, but not in the same "easy" way a human can. They need story lore to back that change up.
Went on a deep dive into his lore (I'm assuming Doresain is a WotC copyright?) and the ties between him and the Leng Ghouls is one of those 'god I wish I knew the truth' mysteries of Pathfinder.
Is Kabriri himself undead or a former mortal-turned-demon who propogated undead? On that note, CAN a divinity like a demon lord or such become undead in that way? Would it be possible for, for example, Zura to turn one of the Malebranche perhaps into a vampire or does their spark of divine power make them beyond such afflictions?
As far as I know, Doresain is a WotC thing invented by Wolfgang Baur in an older Dungeon magazine adventure. I haven't done much with him at all.
The Leng ghoul, and in truth ghouls and ghasts as they mostly exist in D&D, is largely inspired from Lovecraft's writings, particularly things like "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" and to a lesser extent stories like "Pickman's Model" and "The Hound." Certainly, the thematic tie between ghouls and ghasts is fully from Lovecraft, since he has those specific dynamics present in "Dream Quest." A big part of the inspiration also comes from the writings of Clark Ashton Smith, and since he and Lovecraft were corespondents and friends there was a lot of idea cross-pollination there.
So I suspect that the inspiration I took for developing ghouls and Leng Ghouls in Pathfinder likely served as the same inspiration for whoever designed Doresain. It certainly was a primary inspiration for Gygax himself if you go back far enough. But CERTAINLY I know that Wolfgang has the same sort of ghoul inspirations I do as regards Lovecraft and Smith and the old pulps.
Kabriri started out as an elf, then became the first ghoul. That's my bit of attempt in lore to explain why elves can't become paralyzed by ghouls.
Demon lords and gods can become undead, yes, but not in the same "easy" way a human can. They need story lore to back that change up.
I realize just now I forgot to mention I meant Kabriri in the beginning and referenced Doresain as like the 'not Paizo equivalent' and then somehow deleted half a paragraph. Apologies for being confusing!
And the elf-ghoul thing for me is perfect. Really makes sense. My table just got the floor 3 of Gauntlight and everyone is suddenly super interested in ghouls so I just got very interested myself.
Secondary question: has there been a stated reason why the ghouls of Nemret Noktoria hate ghasts? Undead inter-species politics sound fascinating to me and honestly I'd love to see an in-depth write-up of places like Sekamina.
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Secondary question: has there been a stated reason why the ghouls of Nemret Noktoria hate ghasts? Undead inter-species politics sound fascinating to me and honestly I'd love to see an in-depth write-up of places like Sekamina.
That's an easter egg back to Lovecraft, where ghasts and ghouls don't get along.
With Godzilla being your jam, how did you like Shin Godzilla?
Hi James,
Has there ever been an explanation as to why the Isle of Kortos has such a sizable population of minotaurs, harpies and centaurs?
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Hi James,
Has there ever been an explanation as to why the Isle of Kortos has such a sizable population of minotaurs, harpies and centaurs?
This is a weird bit of lore that never had a reason before, which is awkward, but which we've come up with a cool explanation. I'm not sure it's seen print yet though, but it's certainly part of the upcoming Absalom book. I won't spoil much here, but it involves a powerful minotaur spellcaster in the far past.
G'day James,
with the release of Ancestry Guide, we've been blessed with a bunch of new lore for the Duskwalkers, quite a bit of it however appears to be pretty much synonymous with the Samsarans.
Are the Samsarans now an advanced form of a Duskwalker with an Regional twist? IF not will we be expecting the Samsarans in a future book? And if they are, are we tying the Manasaputra to the Boneyard?
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G'day James,
with the release of Ancestry Guide, we've been blessed with a bunch of new lore for the Duskwalkers, quite a bit of it however appears to be pretty much synonymous with the Samsarans.
Are the Samsarans now an advanced form of a Duskwalker with an Regional twist? IF not will we be expecting the Samsarans in a future book? And if they are, are we tying the Manasaputra to the Boneyard?
Nope. Samsarans are their own thing, and are not associated with psychopomps any more than anyone else. Manasaputras, if we update them to 2nd edition, are their own thing as well and will remain tied to the positive energy plane.
Samsarans, I hope, will get more attention at some point in the future; they're one of my favorite creations for Tien Xia.
I just remembered this, and since 1e is now over and done with I have a long dead argument that I'd like you to resolve from 1e if possible. For reasons I won't get into, suffice it to say we had a construct in the party during book 4 of Shattered Star, and in the bout against the Medusa in that book the player in charge of it claimed that his construct should be immune to the Petrification since it was a Fort save, and aside from the ones that target objects Constructs are meant to be immune to those. The opposing argument was that nothing about the Medusa's specific Petrifying Gaze called out anything (like other Petrification-based attacks such as the Cockatrice) that specified the target had to be alive, and that the reason most objects weren't subject to her gaze, mechanically speaking, was because they were technically blind due to having no vision.
The counter claim to this was that even if that was the case, Stone to Flesh would not work to counter the Petrification since the original target was not actually made of Flesh.
This argument technically also involves undead since their Fort immunity is very similar, but since constructs specifically were in question I'll limit it to that. What would you have ruled if you were the GM?
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I just remembered this, and since 1e is now over and done with I have a long dead argument that I'd like you to resolve from 1e if possible. For reasons I won't get into, suffice it to say we had a construct in the party during book 4 of Shattered Star, and in the bout against the Medusa in that book the player in charge of it claimed that his construct should be immune to the Petrification since it was a Fort save, and aside from the ones that target objects Constructs are meant to be immune to those. The opposing argument was that nothing about the Medusa's specific Petrifying Gaze called out anything (like other Petrification-based attacks such as the Cockatrice) that specified the target had to be alive, and that the reason most objects weren't subject to her gaze, mechanically speaking, was because they were technically blind due to having no vision.
The counter claim to this was that even if that was the case, Stone to Flesh would not work to counter the Petrification since the original target was not actually made of Flesh.
This argument technically also involves undead since their Fort immunity is very similar, but since constructs specifically were in question I'll limit it to that. What would you have ruled if you were the GM?
Considering I'm currently working on the 1st edition Kingmaker Bestiary, I wouldn't say 1E is quite "over and done with."
That said, to answer you question, situations like that are handy to adjudicate with common sense, but also game balance is important. I wouldn't have allowed a construct PC to begin with in my game because, to me, that breaks the baseline assumptions of the game. But had they talked me into it, I probably would have let them ignore the petrification if they had no flesh to petrify, or were already made of stone... but I would sure as hell have added more rust monsters or erosion attacks to creatures to the campaign so as there would be some times for the construct to worry while the rest of the party didn't have to fret.
Do you think the old population sizes from the 3.5 DMG are too small?
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Do you think the old population sizes from the 3.5 DMG are too small?
I think that the game's lowballed population sizes for cities from the start, but that's some hard inertia to get changed, it seems. It's not like population sizes impact game balance or the rules at all, though, so in your games, feel free to add a zero or three to all the numbers to make things work better for your table. (REMEMBER: Pathfinder is mostly looking to be a combat/skill/personal character simulator, NOT a society or civilization simulator. You shouldn't go to a game like Civilization and complain it doesn't have great storylines or personal character customization, right? You'd just play a different game.)
Do you think the old population sizes from the 3.5 DMG are too small?I think that the game's lowballed population sizes for cities from the start, but that's some hard inertia to get changed, it seems. It's not like population sizes impact game balance or the rules at all, though, so in your games, feel free to add a zero or three to all the numbers to make things work better for your table. (REMEMBER: Pathfinder is mostly looking to be a combat/skill/personal character simulator, NOT a society or civilization simulator. You shouldn't go to a game like Civilization and complain it doesn't have great storylines or personal character customization, right? You'd just play a different game.)
I mean, my problem was just mostly that you just have these "great empires" like the Kelesh empire or Minkai and then you go to the main cities and you realize their equivalents in the literal RW medieval times have more people.
Not to mention how that with the current tech/progress level of Golarion it is at least around 1700s level of development. London had a population of 500,000 in the year 1700. Nanjing had a population of 400,000 in the 1400s. Once again, this predates powered vehicles, electricity, etc etc, and they didn't have magic either.The question here is, do you think the flavor of these cities and their countries, and to a lesser extent the world itself, is damaged by these population sizes?
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Harking back to the talk about Godzilla upthread, do you think we are ever going to see Mogaru versus RoboMogaru in an adventure or scenario?
Related to that, which do you like best, RoboMogaru, CyberMogaru, or MechaMogaru for the added alliterative appeal?
Not anytime soon, no.
Of the three names you list, I like Mechamogaru the best, because it has ties to Mechagodzilla, but also because it's the most fun to say with its consonance.
Considering I'm currently working on the 1st edition Kingmaker Bestiary, I wouldn't say 1E is quite "over and done with."
That said, to answer you question, situations like that are handy to adjudicate with common sense, but also game balance is important. I wouldn't have allowed a construct PC to begin with in my game because, to me, that breaks the baseline assumptions of the game. But had they talked me into it, I probably would have let them ignore the petrification if they had no flesh to petrify, or were already made of stone... but I would sure as hell have added more rust monsters or erosion attacks to creatures to the campaign so as there would be some times for the construct to worry while the rest of the party didn't have to fret.
The character in question was a Wyrwood, and you are probably right that I should have said "No" to the decision to allow the player to play as such a powerful race with such overarching immunities but truth be told I'd been playing with him for years and at first trusted them to not be too overbearing with the cheese that comes from baseline Construct Immunities.
As it turns out that was the least of my worries since the rest of his build was taking advantage of a loophole in the magic rules by using Mount, Heighten Spell, and an Alter Summoned Monster wand to basically get hours long duration summons from the Summon Monster list. I've always been a very RAW-style GM and I didn't see a way with that lens to argue against it, which made slug-out fights a hassle to handle on my end, but could be solved much more quickly with the multitude of AOE Will saves that Shattered has in its repertoire, since most summons have low Will for their level.
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Considering I'm currently working on the 1st edition Kingmaker Bestiary, I wouldn't say 1E is quite "over and done with."
That said, to answer you question, situations like that are handy to adjudicate with common sense, but also game balance is important. I wouldn't have allowed a construct PC to begin with in my game because, to me, that breaks the baseline assumptions of the game. But had they talked me into it, I probably would have let them ignore the petrification if they had no flesh to petrify, or were already made of stone... but I would sure as hell have added more rust monsters or erosion attacks to creatures to the campaign so as there would be some times for the construct to worry while the rest of the party didn't have to fret.
The character in question was a Wyrwood, and you are probably right that I should have said "No" to the decision to allow the player to play as such a powerful race with such overarching immunities but truth be told I'd been playing with him for years and at first trusted them to not be too overbearing with the cheese that comes from baseline Construct Immunities.
As it turns out that was the least of my worries since the rest of his build was taking advantage of a loophole in the magic rules by using Mount, Heighten Spell, and an Alter Summoned Monster wand to basically get hours long duration summons from the Summon Monster list. I've always been a very RAW-style GM and I didn't see a way with that lens to argue against it, which made slug-out fights a hassle to handle on my end, but could be solved much more quickly with the multitude of AOE Will saves that Shattered has in its repertoire, since most summons have low Will for their level.
Please make sure to limit posts here to questions—it's been by keeping this thread focused only on a question/answer dynamic rather than an open-ended discussion one that I've been able to keep this thread going as long as I have.
Have you ever seen the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 versions of the Gamera movies?
Have you seen the Hulu movie Tentacles, released last week? I haven't seen it yet but apparently it's supposed to be a kind of Valentine's Day horror movie.
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Have you ever seen the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 versions of the Gamera movies?
I have indeed! I have a special delight in my heart for MST3K episodes that did movies that I adored as a kid. The Gamera movies are among that category, along with the Godzilla movies, Deadly Mantis, etc.
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Have you seen the Hulu movie Tentacles, released last week? I haven't seen it yet but apparently it's supposed to be a kind of Valentine's Day horror movie.
I haven't seen it yet. I started watching Hulu's Into the Dark movies when they started but of the first four, only one of them was interesting to me, and even that one felt mostly interesting when compared to the other three dull ones, so I kinda cooled off on the whole series. I've been meaning to get back and watch some of them though. Tentacles is high on that list.
I doubt it'll even come close to Spring though, which is my current favorite horror/romance movie.
(I normally don't do anything at all on Valentine's Day and just treat it like any other day, to be honest, since ignoring it is less depressing than noticing it. That said, I did accidently end up watching a pretty fun horror/romance movie on the 14th—Spontaneous. Very fun movie with some great dialogue and wonderful characters!)
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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This year I started reading a daily calendar on "Forgotten English" which includes both an obscure word and definition, and a anecdote from history, folklore, etc, and it's chock full of ideas. I thought today's word "Geloscopy - divination performed by means of laughter; divingin any person's qualities or character by observation of the manner of his laughter" would potentially be something the church of Cayden Cailean might employ.
Do you have any sources for inspiration for odd customs when you're writing world lore?
I've heard it said that the optimum party size for a Call of Cthulhu adventure is 1 or 2. What do you think?
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On the theme of horror/romance movies, have you seen Rent-a-pal, now showing on Hulu (though not part of their Into the Dark originals)?
Haven't yet, but it's on my (very large) movies-to-watch list. For a movie like this, which is firmly in the "I'm Interested" category but not in the "I've been waiting to see this movie for months and it's something I'll watch the week it comes out", there's a lot of competition for my viewing schedule, so I generally wait for them to hit a streaming service I have a sub to... like this one just did, apparently!-P
I do enjoy me some villainous/creepy Wil Wheaton though.
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This year I started reading a daily calendar on "Forgotten English" which includes both an obscure word and definition, and a anecdote from history, folklore, etc, and it's chock full of ideas. I thought today's word "Geloscopy - divination performed by means of laughter; divingin any person's qualities or character by observation of the manner of his laughter" would potentially be something the church of Cayden Cailean might employ.
Do you have any sources for inspiration for odd customs when you're writing world lore?
Cool!
I don't have any specific sources of inspiration for odd customs. By their nature, they kinda pop up in odd places. I guess the best answer is that I try to vary my sources of media consumption. I watch a LOT of horror movies, but I also read a wide range of folklore/cryptozoology type books/internet articles, watch a fair amount of reality cable TV shows on and off, a relatively eclectic You-Tube subscription base that ranges from video game let's plays to survival/camping videos to lifestyle vlogs to special effects shows to history shows, and surround myself as best I can with creative and intelligent friends and co-workers.
And keep my ears open for new inspirations, and try to jot down notes when I can so I won't forget them.
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I've heard it said that the optimum party size for a Call of Cthulhu adventure is 1 or 2. What do you think?
The optimum party for Call of Cthulhu is a group of players who are serious about roleplay, don't make joke-characters, and pay attention and take notes on the clues and deep-dive into the roleplay itself.
That said, Call of Cthulhu is the BEST game for a single-player party.
My preference for the game is 3 to 4 players who are deeply into the game.
Beyond 4, I can handle up to 6 but beyond that it gets too complicated.
Since the fewer players there are, the less likely it is you'll have a player with nothing to do while other players do things and are the focus of the interaction, though, it makes sense that a game that demands deep focus and concentration from the players would play better with a smaller group.
Hi James, I've been trying to find info on the location of Nurvatchta for a homebrew 2e campaign I'm playing in. I'm writing backstory for an Anadi homebrew character, and I'm trying to figure out where Nurvatchta is in relation to the equator. The only information I can find is that it is in Southern Garund. How south? South coast, or perhaps somewhere near the equator, or just past what is visible to us on current maps?
The main reason I'm asking is for the holiday celebrated by Anadi, "Longwalk". It's said to be celebrated on the date of Nurvatchta's Winter Solstice, which would be around Kuthona 21 if its north of the equator, or Sarenith 21 if it's south of the equator. The area south of what we have on maps right now is so huge it could be anywhere. Figured you'd be the best person to ask, an the only info I could find outside of printed material on Nurvatchta was a forum post you commented on in 2012