As for Eberron... there were a lot of things, but it boils down to the fact that it just didn't feel like D&D. The introduction of all the new races made it feel like something different that I wasn't all that interested in, and the transformation of established concepts into entirely new things (drow as jungle dwellers, halflings into dinosaur riders, orcs into not-orcs, planes into planets) basically took all the things I loved about D&D and arbitrarily changed them. Then put them into a setting that had a lot of internal illogical stuff, like having SUPER powerful magical effects in common, everyday life (lightning trains, cities like Sharn with mile high towers, etc.) but not having any high level spellcasters around to explain where that stuff came from.
Also, renaming a tyrannosaurus into a "swordtooth titan" was incredibly disappointing. The idea that dinosaurs need to be renamed because there's no latin in a world is fundamentally flawed. There's no native Americans in Eberron... so why didn't they rename coyotes into "Slinklurk Deserthounds"?
What did you think of Kalamar?
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I'd love to hear what you have to say about this if you have a moment.
I think that the big thing about RPGs is that they can create a shared experience when you use published adventures, and that's an INCREDIBLY important part of the game that a lot of folks don't seem to notice.
When old-time gamers look back at things that they like to compare stories about, it's not "I had a fighter with all these powers," it's "I played in 'Tomb of Horrors' or 'Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.'" Even though no two games and no two incarnations of a campaign are alike, the fact that gamers across the world had similar experiences with these adventures builds a sort of bond between people who don't know each other, so that when they go online or to conventions, they have a built-in "how did you do this?" type topic.
With our adventures, we're trying to do the same thing—and I think we're getting there. We've already got folks swapping stories about how they handled the clocktower in "Skinsaw" or dealt with the goblins in "Burnt Offerings" or handled the kobolds in Darkmoon Vale.
Anyway, not sure if that answered your implied question or not... but I think that building that kind of experience is key to making RPGs what they are.
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What did you think of Kalamar?As for Eberron... there were a lot of things, but it boils down to the fact that it just didn't feel like D&D. The introduction of all the new races made it feel like something different that I wasn't all that interested in, and the transformation of established concepts into entirely new things (drow as jungle dwellers, halflings into dinosaur riders, orcs into not-orcs, planes into planets) basically took all the things I loved about D&D and arbitrarily changed them. Then put them into a setting that had a lot of internal illogical stuff, like having SUPER powerful magical effects in common, everyday life (lightning trains, cities like Sharn with mile high towers, etc.) but not having any high level spellcasters around to explain where that stuff came from.
Also, renaming a tyrannosaurus into a "swordtooth titan" was incredibly disappointing. The idea that dinosaurs need to be renamed because there's no latin in a world is fundamentally flawed. There's no native Americans in Eberron... so why didn't they rename coyotes into "Slinklurk Deserthounds"?
I'm not all that interested in it, honestly. I do love how they handle maps for the setting, but it's a bit too mired in minutiae at the expense of high adventure for my tastes. And I also get a weird arrogance type vibe from the setting that kinda rubs me the wrong way. Not sure how to explain that, really, but it is what it is.
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James Jacob I like many others think that bravery is not a good choice for gunslingers, instead you should do something like sneak attack, if you attack without being noticed you can deal extra damage, you could call it aimed shot.
Sneak attack is for rogues. Not gunslingers. Again... guns are not sneaky, and thus they don't make good stealth weapons.
In a modern game with silencers and the like, that might be a different story. That's not the game we're making.
Remember reading something about shaven dwarf ascetics in the Kelishite empire or Vudra. Mighta been the 3.5 CS or the Gazetteer.My money is on "hairless."If you were to portray dwarves how you want to, what would that look like? I know you've mentioned no Scottish accents, but beyond that?I second this!
Osirion, actually. The Ouat.
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Osirion, actually. The Ouat.Remember reading something about shaven dwarf ascetics in the Kelishite empire or Vudra. Mighta been the 3.5 CS or the Gazetteer.My money is on "hairless."If you were to portray dwarves how you want to, what would that look like? I know you've mentioned no Scottish accents, but beyond that?I second this!
Thanks! I think I got it mixed up with that cube . . . Never mind, I can't remember anything more about that cube that I'm willing to go out on a limb for.
Let's say you had your way for one day. You get the chance to grenlight any product that you choose, be it a rulebook, setting book, module, or anything else. What would you like to see Paizo release?
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Let's say you had your way for one day. You get the chance to grenlight any product that you choose, be it a rulebook, setting book, module, or anything else. What would you like to see Paizo release?
As far as setting books, modules, Adventure Paths, and player companions, I already pretty much have that power.
Rulebooks are mostly greenlit by Erik Mona, though—but if I had my way, the next one up would be a book that provides lots of advice and help for high-level play (levels 13 to 20th) and that segues into Mythic level play (levels 21s to 36th or thereabouts).
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For a version of dwarves I actually quite like, check out how Bioware handles them in Dragon Age—those dwarves are excessively crude and foul mouthed and have a really backstabby kind of personality. Almost like gentler, hairier drow.
There's a dwarf in Dragonage II that I didn't even know was a dwarf till I started playing the game and saw him next to other characters.
A long question requesting James Jacobs' opinion.
A short response clearly stating his opinion.
Fair point, and thanks for the input.
Second (and excessively belated) question: In the past, you have mentioned a particular incident where, due to a variety of factors, one of your players found a scene you described hilarious enough to fall out of their chair (I believe it involved a sequence of bizarre things flashing by on a mine cart). Other than that incident, can you think of any other instances where you were at a gaming table and something that either a GM or player said, either in-character or out-of-character, that was funny enough to stop or slow gameplay for a while? Maybe something like this?
Third question: Have you ever heard of X-Crawl? You ever play?
I'm not all that interested in it, honestly. I do love how they handle maps for the setting, but it's a bit too mired in minutiae at the expense of high adventure for my tastes. And I also get a weird arrogance type vibe from the setting that kinda rubs me the wrong way. Not sure how to explain that, really, but it is what it is.
What did you think of Kalamar?
Yeah that's pretty much what I thought...they got a bit TOO specific in the setting info, to the point that you couldn't really run anything original there...I tried :P
Did you get a chance to look at any of their homeade classes? Specificly, the Basiran dancer?
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For a version of dwarves I actually quite like, check out how Bioware handles them in Dragon Age—those dwarves are excessively crude and foul mouthed and have a really backstabby kind of personality. Almost like gentler, hairier drow.There's a dwarf in Dragonage II that I didn't even know was a dwarf till I started playing the game and saw him next to other characters.
The dwarves in Shadowbane went a step into funky land, having been created at the dawn of the world by the creator-god, who forged them from stone and metal. They still have bodies that feel like stone, and they are immortal and all-male. The only new dwarves that will ever come into existence are those that are created, either by the creator-god, or by other dwarves who have mastered ridiculously advanced techniques. That's a pretty huge departure from standard fantasy dwarves, and yet they remain dour, enduring metal- and stone-workers who live underground.
Dragging elves, dwarves, halflings, etc. far, far away from Tolkien can lead to some cool stuff, without taking the Talislanta route and utterly abandoning the 'traditional' races, which, as cool as their ideas were, tends to limit their market, as they have few immediately recognizable ideas. (Fantasy games with very different elves and dwarves seem to do better than games that replace the 'classics' entirely with imaginative new races, from what I've seen.)
any chance we'll see a Varisia campaign book soon?? please? I know you love Sandpoint so maybe that will help.
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Dragging elves, dwarves, halflings, etc. far, far away from Tolkien can lead to some cool stuff
Sorta what John Wick did with Wicked Fantasy.
(Google is failing. It's from KQ.)
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Second (and excessively belated) question: In the past, you have mentioned a particular incident where, due to a variety of factors, one of your players found a scene you described hilarious enough to fall out of their chair (I believe it involved a sequence of bizarre things flashing by on a mine cart). Other than that incident, can you think of any other instances where you were at a gaming table and something that either a GM or player said, either in-character or out-of-character, that was funny enough to stop or slow gameplay for a while? Maybe something like this?
All the time. There's usually a few things that come up or occur in games I play in or run that are funny enough to derail the game into laughter. A lot of them aren't really things that I can talk about on these PG-13 rated messageboards, alas.
Third question: Have you ever heard of X-Crawl? You ever play?
I have; I've never played it. I've looked through a few of the books and the maps kinda looked ugly so I sort of lost interest. Maps are one of the most efficient ways, in my experience, to make or break a product.
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Did you get a chance to look at any of their homeade classes? Specificly, the Basiran dancer?
I did, but they were generally so tied into their setting that they didn't really translate all that well into other games, unfortunately. At one point, I was thinking of trying to let Jason Nelson allow the Basiran dancer (or a version of it) in his post-apocalyptic Forgotten Realms game for my character Shensen, but in the end, I decided it wasn't worth all the tinkering that would be required to make the class work in another setting.
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any chance we'll see a Varisia campaign book soon?? please? I know you love Sandpoint so maybe that will help.
Not soon, no. Because this is a book that I'd want to write all or most of, and I don't have a lot of free time right now to write, alas.
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optimize the person above
No thanks.
This is a "ask James questions" thread, not a "build my character" thread. Especially since I'd probably not build you the character you want, since I generally build characters to support cool personalities and histories, not to be the best at their class.
We've got other boards here that are much better places to ask for optimization advice for character builds, and I saw that you've posted there already, so I'd pay attention to the feedback you get there instead if I were you.
Hey James,
A friend of mine was just telling me how much he loves Golarion's flavor, but has a problem with the mechanics matching said flavor.
He gave two examples: A man described in Dark Markets is described and illustrated who is famous for stealing artifacts, traveling the planes, and swindling monarchs, but is only a 6th level expert.
the other(From Curse of the Riven Sky) is a cloud giant is described as being the most skilled and knowledgable giant caster on creating flying citadels, sculpting clouds into castles, opening rifts to different worlds, and he's stated as a standard cloud giant with 6 levels of wizard.
He says its a trend he's noted in a lot of the Golarion books. I'm curious what your take is on this??
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Hey James,
A friend of mine was just telling me how much he loves Golarion's flavor, but has a problem with the mechanics matching said flavor.He gave two examples: A man described in Dark Markets is described and illustrated who is famous for stealing artifacts, traveling the planes, and swindling monarchs, but is only a 6th level expert.
the other(From Curse of the Riven Sky) is a cloud giant is described as being the most skilled and knowledgable giant caster on creating flying citadels, sculpting clouds into castles, opening rifts to different worlds, and he's stated as a standard cloud giant with 6 levels of wizard.
He says its a trend he's noted in a lot of the Golarion books. I'm curious what your take is on this??
Part of my job is to make sure that the world flavor matches the game stats. Sometimes, things slip by... particularly in books I don't have the time to do full development passes on (such as happened with the two books you mention).
In the first case, the NPC should have been listed as a higher level spellcaster, probably, while in the other we should have eithe rgiven the cloud giant more levels of wizard or some sort of magic item that lets him do what the text says he can do.
The fact that "Curse of the Riven Sky" was written by Monte Cook should show that even masters of the game can make these kinds of errors. In a perfect world, the developer of an adventure catches those errors and fixes them, but this isn't a perfect world and those errors can slip through.
While those two examples are legitimate complaints, I'd like to think they're exceptions, not the rule. Those types of errors certainly frustrate me a LOT, that's for sure.
In any case, two examples out of nearly five years of 200+ pages a month seems pretty okay...
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the other(From Curse of the Riven Sky) is a cloud giant is described as being the most skilled and knowledgable giant caster on creating flying citadels, sculpting clouds into castles, opening rifts to different worlds, and he's stated as a standard cloud giant with 6 levels of wizard.
Cloud giants have always had the capacity to shape clouds in their description without any explanation of the mechanical used to do that do that, from first edition.
I would say that Knowledge (arcana) 17 make him seriously knowledgeable in the field.
Let's say you had your way for one day. You get the chance to grenlight any product that you choose, be it a rulebook, setting book, module, or anything else. What would you like to see Paizo release?As far as setting books, modules, Adventure Paths, and player companions, I already pretty much have that power.
Rulebooks are mostly greenlit by Erik Mona, though—but if I had my way, the next one up would be a book that provides lots of advice and help for high-level play (levels 13 to 20th) and that segues into Mythic level play (levels 21s to 36th or thereabouts).
For what it's worth I would also love to see this.
Also, where's the mountain dew?
Sitting next to your glasses.
I just want to note that dwarves being made directly by a deity and being somewhat genderless is actually quite like Tolkien's dwarves in the Silmarillion, which is a bit different from what they become in the Hobbit and LotR.
I just want to note that dwarves being made directly by a deity and being somewhat genderless is actually quite like Tolkien's dwarves in the Silmarillion, which is a bit different from what they become in the Hobbit and LotR.
Tolkien's dwarves in earlier versions of his mythology are clearly from the same roots as the Norse and German dwarves -- treacherous, greedy, apparently all-male, and born out of error/afterthought (the Norse dwarves were born from the maggots living on the corpse of the world-body). His dwarves first appear in a parallel to the Brising necklace story (minus the sex).
I think the Hobbit was vaguely influenced by the dwarves of Snow White (Grimm, not Disney) and thus became much more appealing, though the dwarves of the Silmarillion were also evolving to a more complex role.In my own campaign world, they tend to be evil.
that
Yeah, that's pretty much what I was driving at. :)
Did you get a chance to look at any of their homeade classes? Specificly, the Basiran dancer?I did, but they were generally so tied into their setting that they didn't really translate all that well into other games, unfortunately. At one point, I was thinking of trying to let Jason Nelson allow the Basiran dancer (or a version of it) in his post-apocalyptic Forgotten Realms game for my character Shensen, but in the end, I decided it wasn't worth all the tinkering that would be required to make the class work in another setting.
I was thinking of creating a PF-ized non-campaign setting specific version of that, either as a base class or a bard archtype. Is it ok to post it on the boards when I'm done?
Rulebooks are mostly greenlit by Erik Mona, though—but if I had my way, the next one up would be a book that provides lots of advice and help for high-level play (levels 13 to 20th) and that segues into Mythic level play (levels 21s to 36th or thereabouts).
That's an excellent plan and I'm very excited to be a part of it. ;-)
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Mr. Jacobs:
Would you be willing to get some bacon for me? Nobody else here will.Also, can I call you Mr. Smiley on account of your dinosaur having a nice grin on his face?
Thank you.
For all the work you've put into asking folks to go get you some bacon... you could have gone to get some yourself. Plus, it's generally a good idea to exercise at some point before or after the bacon quest concludes anyway.
You can call me Mr. Smiley if you want, but I won't answer questions, since this isn't an "Ask Mr. Smiley" thread.
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Slinklurk Deserthounds would be a GREAT name for a roller derby team.
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You have previously stated that some archetypes deserve to be expanded to alt.classes. One of your examples was totem barbarian. Now we have a lot more archetypes in play. Could you name, let's say ten, archetypes that you would like to see in alt.class format?
Let's see...
totem warrior
shaman (druid)
swashbuckler
sniper
geisha
separatist (I'd call it a heretic though)
trapper
synthesist
Not without spoiling some archetypes from Ultimate Combat, I guess...
So what book about the planets, did Erik not allow you to announce at PaizoCon? ;)
You have previously stated that some archetypes deserve to be expanded to alt.classes. One of your examples was totem barbarian. Now we have a lot more archetypes in play. Could you name, let's say ten, archetypes that you would like to see in alt.class format?
I would the inverse of that,
I would like ninjas, and samurai to have their own archetypes.
The ninja is like a blend of Rogue(mostly) and Monk(partially), and due to this blend should have it's own archetypes, like a more Ki based ninja, a more combat based ninja, a Kunoichi (gender locked archetype), a more skilled ninja, a scouting ninja, etc..
The samurai is somewhat configurable with the use of orders, but I would like to see a more weapon(s) specific configuration like in APG for the fighters, applied to the samurai.
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This is something that's been discussed elsewhere on the boards in the past...
How do commoners and experts in Pathfinder achieve higher levels, i.e., above 1st or 2nd? How does a shopkeeper or a sage with no appreciable combat or magical skills amass the thousands of experience points necessary to get to higher levels?
Do they get experience in other ways, or should you just not worry about XP totals and award these characters levels appropriate to their skill and status?
In my view... only PCs and NPCs they control/adventure with (like cohorts) actually ever gain XP. Experience points are pretty much ONLY a game mechanic to reward players for becoming more heroic.
NPCs who aren't directly controlled by a player character don't need XP points to track their accomplishments—the GM can just level them up as he needs to, IF he ever needs to. It'll be unusual to need to track the growth of power of a commoner—once a commoner's worth following that closely, he's probably a PC anyway.
So, just assign those NPCs their levels and don't worry about it.
So what book about the planets, did Erik not allow you to announce at PaizoCon? ;)What about the planets indeed?
So you are saying the AP after Skull & Shackles is going to be in Numeria?
It would be interesting to see some of those archtypes as alternate classes. But I still think the Shaman should be a spontanous caster version of the Druid with a totem animal or spirit instead of bloodlines or mysteries.
I would love for some Numeria love, stuff for areas other than the inner sea, and/or anything for the other planets.
So what are your least liked class(es) to play?
What is the weirdest race? class? character? you have ever played?
Nope. Not at all.So you are saying the AP after Skull & Shackles is going to be in Numeria?So what book about the planets, did Erik not allow you to announce at PaizoCon? ;)What about the planets indeed?
No you aren't saying it or no it isn't going to be?
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Why don't you like me?